The Bachelor War
by ReadyFred-ReadyGeorge
Summary: Set between chapters 29-30 of 'Legacy of the Shadowborn' by song-of-myself35990. The Imperial Elite gather on Nar Shadaa to celebrate the upcoming wedding of Kereniss Simon and Serrin Timms, for the first time in forever it is a night for the Empire to celebrate and let their guard down, but the Republic is never far away. Rated T for language and implied mature content.
1. RIDICULOUSLY IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE!

RIDICULOUSLY IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE:

(THE BLOCK CAPITALS ARE ENTIRELY NECESSARY!) THIS STORY IS A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT BETWEEN MYSELF AND SONG-OF-MYSELF35990 AND IS A MIDQUEL TO HER FIC 'LEGACY OF THE SHADOW BORN', TAKING PLACE BETWEEN CHAPTERS 29 AND 30.

IF YOU HAVE NOT YET READ THESE FICS, PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW, OTHERWISE THIS STORY WILL MAKE NO SENSE!

THE PROFILE OF THE EVER FANTASTIC 'SONG-OF-MYSELF35990, WITHOUT WHOM, THIS STORY WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE:

u/4199141/song-of-myself35990

'US AGAINST THE GALAXY': THE STORY OF SAHESRI, A DATHOMIRAN ZABRAK SITH WARRIOR AND HIS ROMANCE WITH VETTE DURING AND JUST AFTER THE EVENTS OF 'STAR WARS THE OLD REPUBLIC.':

s/8979993/1/Us-Against-The-Galaxy

'LEGACY OF THE SHADOW BORN': THE SEQUEL TO 'US AGAINST THE GALAXY', 'LEGACY' TELLS THE STORY OF AN EMPIRE RESURGENT SOME THREE DECADES AFTER THE ORIGINAL STORY:

s/9196198/1/Legacy-of-the-Shadow-Born

BOTH OF THESE FICS ARE SUPER AWESOME, AND YOU REALLY SHOULD READ THEM, EVEN IF YOU HAVE NO INTENTION OF THEN RETURNING TO THIS ONE. 'SONG' IS A FANTASTIC AUTHOR AND HAS BETA'D AND HELPED ME THROUGH THIS EVERY SINGLE STEP OF THE WAY OVER THE PAST YEAR OF WRITING THIS STORY. EVERY ORIGINAL CHARACTER WITHIN IS USED WITH HER EXPRESS PERMISSION, AS IS THE SETTING.

I CAN ONLY TAKE CREDIT FOR MY OWN PROSE STYLE, THIS PARTICULAR SUB-PLOT IN HER WIDER STORY AND THE CHARACTERS OF KERENISS AND SERRIN; MY ORIGINAL CHARACTER FROM 'SWTOR' AND AN OC I CREATED RESPECTIVELY (WHO IS NOW ANOTHER OF MY SWTOR CHARACTERS, SINCE I FINALLY GOT THE MEMBERSHIP) BOTH OF WHOM APPEAR SOMEWHAT PROMINENTLY IN 'LEGACY'.

STAR WARS IS THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF LUCASARTS (AND NOW DISNEY), LIKE EVERY OTHER FANFIC AUTHOR I AM MERELY PLAYING AROUND IN THEIR SANDBOX; IN THIS CASE I AM PLAYING IN "SONG'S" SEGMENT OF THE WIDER STAR WARS SANDBOX, BUT YOU GET THE IDEA.

THANK YOU FOR READING, HOPEFULLY THIS WILL MAKE THE STORY MAKE SENSE.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU ALL.

-READYFRED-READYGEORGE.


	2. Part 1: A Night to Remember

PART 1: A Night To Remember.

The feeling of being lost for words was as alien to Lord Kereniss Simon as a Bantha was to Kamino. For all of his twenty three years, he had prided himself on his wit, his intellectual banter, his penchant for talking his way into and out of problems or his seeming inability to shut his mouth in general. Yet now, of all the times when he needed the power of speech as his ally, his vocal cords seemed to fail him.

It wasn't as if he was trying to learn Huttese or Shyriiwook, or even Mando'a, regardless of the fact that he could speak all of those tongues as though he was born to them; all he needed in theory was five syllables in Galactic Basic, split into four of the most easily pronounceable words known to advanced sentient life.

That's where the theory ended. Reality promptly kicked the theory somewhere rather private and tossed it out of the nearest window. Because bugger the syllable count; the words "Will you marry me?" were going to form the most difficult line ever uttered by the normally boundlessly eloquent Sith Lord, and thus were the reason he had barricaded himself in the comm-chamber of his and his family's retreat on Naboo, and was currently pouring his woes out via a secure holo to his master and the Empress.

"Calm down son," came the reassuring tones of Darth Consace, Kereniss' mentor.

"You're hardly the first man in existence to have difficulty proposing; though I wonder why it's us you're turning to for help here." The Dark Council member continued, chuckling lightly, which made a small smile wind its way onto the young Lord's otherwise aghast expression.

"Yeah Ker," added the Empress, looking thoughtful. "I don't know about Consace, but I didn't exactly go down on one knee before the Emperor, I'm hardly the expert at these things."

Her tone was light, but a mirror of Consace's own confusion was not too deeply buried beneath her words.

"That's just it though." Kereniss began, exhaling deeply as he ran a hand through his scarlet hair. "I want to know what she would want out of this."

He chuckled again despite himself. "It doesn't take a certified genius to say 'Will you marry me?"

He grinned, the light prodding of his two greatest mother figures having coaxed some of his usual wit out from within him.

"And since I _am_ a certified genius, I want to make it a bit more special than the usual down-on-one-knee theatrics."

"A certified genius who would _never_ dream of blowing his own trumpet." Consace said, her voice playfully dripping with the sarcasm that her surrogate son had inherited so fully. The three of them laughed aloud, each chuckle bringing Kereniss back into his usual aura of confidence.

"In all seriousness though, what do women expect from proposals…other than the obvious?" he asked of his mothers.

"Raunchy sex." The Empress deadpanned, making Kereniss roll his eyes.

"Seriously Your Grace, you sound like Draco."

The Empress chuckled, turning to Consace to try and deflect the topic and lighten the mood some more. "Speaking of our dear Lord Zelada, what's he up to?"

"He's on Nar Shaddaa, working as a negotiator to the Hutts for the planet's annexation."

Kereniss rolled his eyes, "Last holo I had from him said that he was..."

He raised his fingers to form air-quote marks.

"_Knee deep in clunge_."

Darth Consace and The Empress both laughed heartily. After raising several sons apiece, vulgarity was the last thing that could hurt the sensibilities of the Dark Council member or the "Dragon Queen." Kereniss grinned broadly as he continued.

"I love my big brother very dearly, but for a man who has, by his own recounting, charmed his way from one side of the galaxy to the other and back, he's not the most tactful individual when speaking to family. I mean there are some things I just don't want to know, much less hear about so bluntly."

"I feel your pain, much as I saw this coming when we sent him there." replied Consace with a flavourful mix of empathy and mirth. "There are wild Tuskens who have never seen civilisation, who retain more familial tact than Draco, but that hasn't seemed to hurt his skill or his libido."

"Either way, don't go asking him for proposal advice" chimed in Empress Ce'na, swinging back to the matter at hand now that Kereniss' sense of humour had completely replaced his overbearing panic.

"That was certainly never on the agenda, Your Grace." He conceded, shoulders sagging slightly as he leaned against the holocommunicator, exhaling a breath that he had no idea he'd been holding. "But still, I need to know what to say, because for possibly the first time in my life...I don't have the foggiest clue what to do.'

"We don't know either sweetling," replied Consace, her face betraying just how much she wished she could hug her surrogate son right now.

If only fate were so kind.

"We aren't Serrin. Only she knows how to make her feel loved."

"Go by what your heart tells you, thank the maker you Sith boys have some emotion. Imagine how hard this would be if you were a Jedi." The Empress mused, to which Kereniss shrugged in acknowledgement.

"Serrin _was_ a Jedi though," he replied thoughtfully. "She still is one at heart, even if she's the fastest rising star in Imperial Naval history. She isn't used to grand emotions; she spent twenty years of her life being indoctrinated to shun them."

He scratched at the stubble that was starting to form on his chin from his enforced seclusion on Naboo. "I'm afraid that if I make some grandiose gesture of affection, I'll scare her. But if I try to make it simple then it'll feel anti-climactic, and I don't know where to draw the line in the middle…"

Kereniss was interrupted from his monologue by a loud, obnoxious beeping noise. Turning his attention to the display on the communicator, from which the intrusive tone was blaring he checked the frequency.

"That's the team from the estate's scanner array" he said.

"But that must mean…"

An unexplainable mix of gut-wrenching dread and mindless joy assaulted the senses of the young Sith Lord as he patched through the frequency. A fizzling, blue spectre shimmered to life on the holo-display, showing a balding, plump man in an Imperial Navy Uniform looking rather flustered as he realised just who else he was sharing a channel with.

"Ensign Mormont sir," began the officer, offering a polished salute to the red-headed Sith Lord, before turning to the others.

"Your Grace, Darth Consace, my apologies. I did not know Lord Kereniss was on holo with you."

"It's quite alright Ensign, no harm done." Ce'na waved away the man's apologies with a smile. Kereniss suppressed a grin; he knew how much the Empress quietly enjoyed seeing Imperial personnel bend-over-backwards for her. With possibly the most relieved expression Kereniss had seen on anybody's face in recent memory, the officer turned back to him.

"My Lord, our scanners show that an Imperial ship has just entered the system; Star-Destroyer Class."

Kereniss tried not to groan, he'd invited his beloved here to spend her week's shore-leave in the comfort and luxury of the Great Six's Naboo retreat, and with the remaining five members so conveniently absent (he reminded himself just how much he owed Dryzell and Tiaba for that one. If all went according to plan, he owed them more than he could ever repay.)

But he hadn't expected her for at least another day. He still had no clue what to say, he had nothing prepared. He had been planning to take a shuttle to Theed to buy flowers and food or possibly a lot of fireworks. He'd been banking on a 24 hour margin that was now lost to him. But that couldn't stop the smile that wound its way around his elfin features at the thought of clapping eyes on her again.

"Did the ship provide its designation Ensign?" he inquired, already knowing the answer. Vette and Consance's eyes betrayed the exact same thought.

"Yes my lord. It's the _Skyproud_."

_Fantastic _said his Id.

_Fuck _said his ego.

"Very good Mormont." said his voice.

"Patch them through our coordinates and scramble a fighter escort for their shuttles. I know Commander Timms has her own but this is not Imperial space so we can never be too careful."

With a crisp nod, a very low bow to the Empress and Darth Consace and another eager salute to Kereniss, the figure of Ensign Mormont fizzled into nothingness.

For the third time in the last hour Kereniss let out his pent up breath, and ran his hands back through his hair, a nervous tick if there ever was one.

"Looks like it's the usual Plan A, dear" offered Consace encouragingly.

"Which is?" inquired Ce'na with a slight smile.

Kereniss returned the look.

"Making it up as I go along, Your Grace."

It had been several years since Serrin had set foot on Naboo, her last visit being back when she was a Jedi, studying under Master Tidas. She smiled as she took in the view of the rolling hills and cliffs afforded to her as she strolled through the gardens of the estate. Not too far away in the distance, there was a waterfall; a brilliant cascade of sapphire diving it's way off a cliff of luminous marble before dancing into the waves below. She had often wondered how, when half the galaxy was torn apart by war; when trenches and redoubts seemed to circumnavigate whole worlds, and the night sky was lit up by the neon blooms of turbolaser fire, that places so tranquil still existed.

Tidas had always loved Naboo, she could remember him guiding her through the market stalls of Theed one year, not long after she'd been apprenticed to him. It had been her eleventh birthday, and he'd taken her round the markets to see if there was anything she wanted as a present. She smiled at the memory, as most Jedi didn't celebrate their birthdays;

_"Self-gratification is not the way of the light side_" Tidas had once told her, quoting his own master word-for-word, before promptly continuing. "_But I won't tell Grandmaster Shan if you don't" _with a mischievous wink.

Serrin paused under a tree of cherry blossoms, the only bit of much-needed shade from the gentle, but ever-so-slightly-overbearing summer sunshine. She ran a hand over the broach that remained pinned to her uniform; a tiny emerald surrounded by golden rose petals, the only concession to ostentation she ever wore on her otherwise pristine uniform. (When one commands an entire fleet of Star Destroyers, one can get away with flouting the occasional uniform regulation), It had been the birthday present from Master Tidas all those years ago and as she ghosted her fingers across the emerald she let out a silent prayer that her Master had found peace in the force.

She had spent weeks after her flight to the Empire alone; curled up in bed, almost completely catatonic as she recalled how her Jedi captors had brutalised her, but she would also spend hours at a time cradling the broach her Master had given her between her slender fingers and wondering whether that one tiny flouting of the code, that one gift, that one act of emotion, had started off Tidas' fall to the Dark Side. Had the rose in fact been a weed? One that took root and sprouted all those years later. The Empire's best psychiatrists had seen to her and tried to help her out of the armoured emotional shell she had built around herself.

But in the end, it had only been Kereniss and Kira who she could open up to. The man who'd freed her from what might have been certain death and handed her keys to a new life, and a woman who had walked this path before and had encouraged her to take her first few, tentative steps towards being the woman she was today.

As she dropped her exploring fingers away from the dazzling green stone, she smiled broadly. Even if the broach had ultimately robbed her of her teacher, it had delivered to her so much more. And that was when she caught sight of the emerald's most valuable gift:

He was standing at the edge of the estate's training yard, watching two men and a woman, all armed with red lightsabers dance around a grinning male Falleen, stripped to the waist, effortlessly holding them all at bay, a training lightsaber the colour of the beautiful waterfall Serrin had spied earlier, held almost lazily in his offhand. None of the yard's occupants had seen her yet, so, grinning like a dervish, she quietly snuck around the edge of the yard as the Sith at the centre of the deadly dance parried an overhand strike by one of the men, a Twilek with teal skin, going redder and redder by the minute with exertion, before executing a blindingly fast spinning-kick that knocked the poor lad on his back, his scarlet blade fizzling into nothingness as it rolled away from him.

The girl was next; an olive skinned human who couldn't be any more than sixteen, tried to stab at her target whilst his back was turned, only to have her strike hit thin air as the Falleen danced inside her guard, locking her blade down his own before putting one foot behind her back leg and throwing her from her feet with a blast of the force.

The last acolyte, a Kiffar male with dreadlocks reaching halfway down his back, tried to catch the Sith off balance by charging at him, swinging a savage upward slice, which the reptilian warrior ducked around, before striking again the other way, again meeting only thin air. The Falleen spun past his attacker, and to Serrin's visible shock, deactivated his lightsaber altogether. The Kiffar brought his scarlet blade crashing down, in what was obviously meant to be a finishing strike, but was met with, of all things, the scaly Sith's foot, which had stopped the attack in its tracks with a force-charged kick. Before the Kiffar novice could react however, the Falleen brought his foot down in a wide arc, knocking the lightsaber aside before a second spinning kick from the acrobatic fighter sent the boy flying several yards before he hit the floor with a resigned thud.

Serrin looked on in awe as the half-naked fallen wiped the sweat from his brow and helped the novices to their feet, giving them a parting tirade as he did so.

"And so, the moral of today's lesson is, expect the unexpected!"

"The other morals being that Dry'zell likes to show off and that you really should stop sneaking up on me love."

Serrin jumped at the voice behind her, she had been so engrossed in the action taking place on the training yard that she hadn't noticed the scarlet haired Sith Lord move from his spectating position, much less see him sneak around behind her. Laughing, she spun on her heel and found herself in her lover's arms. She ran a hand through his cropped scarlet hair and nuzzled lovingly against the crook of his neck.

"You know Kereniss, I'd much prefer seeing you demonstrate your…" she ran a slender finger along his sharp chin before continuing. "...incredible skill out here."

"Of course you would," he countered, planting a chaste, yet gloriously tantalising kiss on her lips. "I look far better than 'Zell with my shirt off."

The Falleen in question snorted loudly. "Ha! My brother has such a creative imagination doesn't he?"

He pulled a white shirt over his shoulders, but deliberately left it unbuttoned, letting his granite-hard abs catch the sunlight to reinforce his point. Kereniss rolled his eyes as far into the recesses of his eyelids as they would go, making Serrin giggle as she ghosted her fingers across her lover's own, rather impressive torso. If Dryz'ell was going to play that serve, she was certainly going to catch it on the rebound.

"But alas my dear, your love for my pencil of a brother has blinded you to my beauty." Dry'zell monologued.

"Draco's been giving you lessons hasn't he?" Kereniss inquired, an eyebrow climbing ever higher up his forehead, "Go point your pheromones somewhere else Zell." He added with a playful grin as he snaked a wiry arm around Serrin's lower back.

She had to fight the urge to purr at the contact, her every sensibility slamming the fact that Dry'zell and his battered acolytes were still present against the edges of her consciousness. She had spent several, maddeningly lonely weeks apart from Kereniss, to the point where even the most subtle of touches from him made the former Jedi want to drag her boyfriend's leather-clad backside to the nearest secluded spot, and ravish him till they were spent and panting from the exertion.

Even the very notion of it teased gingerly at the edges of her sensibilities, sensibilities that had been repressed for twenty years and even now were still not entirely unwound. She blinked herself forcibly back out of her sensual reverie, and tried vainly to quell the heat rushing to her cheeks. She wondered briefly if this was just a side effect of Dryzell's Falleen pheromones getting her hot under the collar, if so, she made a mental note to thank Zell later for inadvertently heightening the mood.

…After she had kissed Kereniss' brains out of course.

"In any case" began Dry'zell as he dismissed his three recent victims with a wave of his hand, "I'd pay good money to see you take on three men at once brother."

Kereniss lightly punched the other man on the shoulder as he chuckled.

"I've done it before and you know it."

"Of course, but I wouldn't want to miss the look on your face on the off-chance you get your arse kicked."

"Speaking of things you'd pay good money to see, don't you and Tiaba _have plans_." Kereniss deflected with a pointed glance, which made Serrin raise an eyebrow.

"Yes yes! I'm meeting her at the Theed Opera house as soon as I've changed." Dry'zell replied, waving his hand dismissively, "Or would you rather I go now and show off my manly physique to the lovely ladies of the Naboo upper class?"

"Their husbands definitely wouldn't be a problem." Serrin chimed in with a cheeky smile and an upturned elfin nose. "With sweat that potent, you'd gas them on sight." Her head bounced against Kereniss' chest as he guffawed, and Dryzell held his hands over his heart in fake-shock.

"My lady, you wound me!" he intoned, earning another round of giggles.

"But nevertheless, I shall depart, a much needed shower beckons."

Dry'zell grinned broadly, "Don't worry; you'll get your romantic evening here, all to yourselves my dear lovebirds." He gave a mocking bow that even the most practiced thespian would be proud of, spun on his heel, and took off briskly towards the manor.

"Send Tiaba my love!" called Serrin to his retreating back, to which her recipient turned and gave a broad salute whilst walking backwards, before disappearing into the confines of the house in search of that elusive shower.

Her fingers entwined themselves in his the moment his brother was out of sight. Smiling from ear to ear, she stood on her tiptoes to plant one agonisingly slow kiss after another against his coarse, stubble-clad chin. His hot breath, musky with desire, tickled against her ear as he spoke.

"Somebody's pleased to see me."

She giggled into his chin, snaking a slender hand up through the back of his blood-red hair as her eyes lock with his.

In these moments, gazing into his deep amber orbs, she sees all the myriad moments they've spent together staring back at her, a kaleidoscope of memories, dancing together in his eyes. She always wonders if he sees the same in hers:

Their flight from captivity; stowing away on a cargo shuttle, curled up against him, seemingly the only friend she had in a galaxy turned upside down, burying her face in his battered robes and feeling his arm around her for the first time, not the loving caress she felt now, just the reassuring hug of a friend

_Did he become that so fast?_

His voice whispering to her in the darkness that everything would be alright...

She saw the long nights alone in her new, unfamiliar quarters in the Imperial Citadel. Saw Kereniss, bleary eyed and haggard, yet clinging to wakefulness with all his might just so that she had somebody to talk to. He rarely said anything those nights, as he sat in the chair by her bed. But he always listened, listened as she poured her heart out for the life she had lost, until sleep snatched her away, only then would be allow himself to rest.

She remembered the first time they'd sparred, when Lady Kira had officially taken her on as her apprentice; saw his cheeky smile looming over her as he helped her to her feet time after time, only to knock her flat again, different words of encouragement whispered into her ear with every bout.

"_You're balancing too much on your right foot, try it like this…" "Try that underarm slash again, only this time REALLY give it some!" "Try deactivating your saber at the last second, and then activate it inside their guard, if you can time it right it works every time…"_

Until that fateful bout where she spun inside his guard and knocked him to the floor with the pommel of her saberstaff and pinned him there, she recalled how hard he'd laughed, whilst Kira, Tiaba and Dry'zell had cheered and Draco had rather loudly wolf-whistled from the sidelines.

She'd kissed him then, a giggling, impulsive peck on the lips that had silenced all present. She laughed internally as she recounted her hurried excuses and her lightning fast exit from the room, pausing only to look back over her shoulder at an awestruck Kereniss still lying there, completely spaced out, with Kira standing over him, looking at her with a grin that said "_There will be girl talk later!"_

She saw their first, tentative, fumbling, giggling attempts at lovemaking. Saw Kereniss' expression flit between pleasure and nail-biting worry every time he thought he'd hurt her. She vividly remembered the first time she felt the network of scars running across his wiry frame under her fingers and lips. Scars that even now, she could feel latticing their way across his back as she caressed him at the edge of the training yard. She remembered how she'd asked him afterward, voice husky as her body took its sweet time winding down from her climax, where he'd learned how to do that, and how she'd rolled her eyes as he joked

_"When your older brother is Draco "I-am-the-god-of-tits-and-wine" Zelada, you tend to get a hook-up every now and again."_

But it was what he's said next that had cemented the foundations of her love for him, and all sexual jokes immediately jumped out of the window.

"_But nothing was ever that special, or that fantastic. You're truly beautiful Serrin."_

"Penny for your thoughts?"

His voice broke her reveire around her and she blinked herself back into reality, but not before pressing a slightly-less-than-chaste kiss against his lips.

"Just thinking how much I love you."

"You really need to stop buying those romantic-comedy holovids." He chuckled, but he kissed her anyway, teasing her bottom lip between his teeth before dancing their tongues together in that all-too-familiar waltz.

"But I love you too."

"Hello pot, my name is kettle; you're looking a bit on the black side." She had no idea exactly when his penchant for banter had rubbed off on her, but in any case, the incredulous eyebrow standing at attention halfway up his forehead was priceless. He touched a mocking palm to his forehead in a mock swoon, reminiscent of his brother's departing performance, and she stifled a laugh.

"You do me wrong dear one."

"Can I _do _you right as well?" she inquired, voice oozing with sarcasm and betraying just how much she wanted to laugh. Kereniss' dragged his palm across his face and let his eyes roll for the umpteenth time that afternoon.

"And the porn holos can go straight in the bin next to the rom-coms." he muttered, but it didn't stop him kissing her again, laughing breathlessly against her lips.

Out of all their long history of precious moments, it was these that she loved best. Laying her head against his chest and feeling his laughter and heartbeat beat a comfortable rhythm against it. Moments like these revealed just who he was underneath, past all the legends and mysticism of 'The Great Six', past the tales that told of the half-dozen Sith who carried Emperor Sahesri's banner through the darkness of space, they who had never been bested, the elite amongst the warrior society that was the Sith Order. That was what the majority of the Empire got to see, and Serrin thanked the maker everyday that she got to see the level deeper than that, the true faces behind the legend, the people that the collective imaginations of the Empire had built into superheroes.

To your standard Imperial citizen, Kereniss, like all his siblings, was the ultimate warrior, the stalwart banner-man of the Empire. But only she knew the subtleties. Only she knew the real him, corny though it was to say it. She knew her boyfriend didn't have Draco's inherent charm or nonchalant bravado (not that the eldest surrogate child of Darth Consace and Darth Banaton couldn't back up that bravado, quite the opposite she knew), nor did Ker have Dryzell's athleticism and patience around students. Though he'd never admit it, he couldn't match Tiaba with a blade seven times out of ten either. But none of his siblings could match his wit, his penchant for dressing down even the most pompous of foes, or for making her laugh so hard she thought her sides would burst.

The scarlet Sith had a silver smile hiding a silver tongue; a tongue that could, amongst it's endless arsenal of retorts and banter, could invoke a fire within her soul at the merest word, the barest hint of an _"I love you," _in her ear from him could set her senses ablaze.

Draco was the womanizer, the charmer, the scoundrel. The man who could, if he was to be believed, talk the clothes off of any woman in Imperial space, and most of the Republic whilst he was at it.

But it was Kereniss whose cultured tones could make a girl fall in love with him. The brothers liked to joke that it was Draco who could break hearts and Ker who could mend them. But the best part about it, from where Serrin was standing, was that he saved that talent for her and her alone.

She didn't know when exactly they had managed to find themselves at the edge of the estate's rather large, blissfully unoccupied pool, or when she'd managed to divest him of his shirt. All that mattered was that he was here, and he was hers. She pressed her lips to his, fencing her tongue inside of his mouth like a predatory beast, she felt his hands wander about her body, subtly caressing all the weak spots about her that he knew so well. There was something animalistic in the kiss; it wasn't the blissful, yet aggressive passion with which they melded themselves into each other, but the very nature of it. Everything about the contact seemed to scream. _I am yours, and you are mine, this territory is marked._ As she broke away from him, she looked up into his eyes again and frowned, there was something unreadable there, something…

She had just enough time to register the playful smirk on his lips before he gently shoved her backwards, sending her tumbling into the pool, still largely clothed.

She surfaced to the sound of his roaring laughter from the side of the pool, and shot him a murderous glance whose edge was entirely blunted by her bedraggled, soaked appearance, and succeeded in nothing but making him laugh louder. It was infectious as always and before she realised it, she was laughing along too, splashing him with a torrent of water with a mere thought, and drenching him from head to foot. Oh the force had its uses sometimes.

Shaking himself off like one of his precious Akk pups, Kereniss shot his lover another trademark mischievous look, before cannonballing into the pool with the force of a turbolaser blast. He surfaced in front of her, snaking a soaked arm around her and laughing into kiss after kiss as she mirrored his movements, all the while treading steadily into deeper water…

"How in the name of the force did I ever get so lucky?"

He mused aloud, running a practiced finger along the contours of her spine as they lay on the grass by the pool's edge. She hummed with contentment as he placed a chaste, somewhat spent kiss on her lips. He silently thanked the force for two things; that he had crossed paths with her, his amazing, brilliant, incomparably beautiful lover. And that this particular pool edge was not visible from the house.

They were still as bare as the day they were born, their skin glistening in the sunlight as the pearls of water still rebelliously clinging to them caught the summer glare. To him, Serrin Timms looked beyond a goddess.

"What is it?" she asked, her concern-laden voice snapping him from his reverie, he gazed into her emerald eyes, more beautiful in his view than even the green jewels themselves. A wash of emotions flooded through him, fear, concern, paranoia, love, awe, shock, lust, they all melded together in his gut like a rainbow with a lead lining.

He gulped, trying to keep his expression neutral.

This was it. This was the moment. This was the reason he had spent so many hours locked in that comm-room pouring his heart out. The moment that every second of his life had laid the road towards, since he first saw her dragged into that godforsaken Mantellian prison.

Kereniss had seen many things; he had been fired on by scores of Republic troopers, he had crossed swords with Jedi, he had seen planets burn in the fires of war, he had seen Star Destroyers blasted out of the sky and felt the death scream of all their passengers resonate in the force, an inhuman cry of terror followed by sinister silence. He had watched helplessly as his birth parents had been mercilessly cut down by the Jedi spiriting away the Emperor's lost son, he'd seen the light leave his father's eyes. But nothing terrified him as much as this.

Because this wasn't a fear of death.

This was the terror of losing what made life worth living. Compared to that, death was a tiny speck of dust in a hurricane.

But something in Serrin's anxious eyes becalmed him. Was it the force reaching out from behind those jade orbs, willing him to continue? Or was it something more primal? He didn't know. He never learned what it was. All that the, for once, entirely flabbergasted Lord Kereniss Simon knew was that something in his love's gaze awoke a fire within him. A blaze that burnt brighter than the twin suns of Tatooine, that consumed him body and soul, yet could not harm him.

The ring was in his hand before he even knew he'd moved, the golden band inlaid with Corellian pearls, clinging to a single, tiny, dazzlingly bright green crystal at the centre; a tiny, artfully filed and restored shard taken from the core of Kereniss' own lightsaber. He had never been one for ostentation, but love had its way of kicking one's personal rules in the face.

"Will you marry me Serrin?"

The words danced from his mouth, in a voice barely above a whisper. Hang the plans! Hang the fireworks, and the feast, and the emergency last-minute trip to Theed for scented candles and whatever else seemed romantic enough for the occasion. Now was the moment, and he wouldn't have swapped it for the world.

His eyes never left hers, his amber orbs locked onto the green as he channelled every bit of emotion he could into the gaze. Nothing happened for a beat…two…three.

And then suddenly she was on him, her lips crashing against his and her voice moaning the same words into his eager, caressing mouth.

"Yes…Yes…oh Gods above **yes**!" she cried between kisses, rolling over on top of him in her rush to get at him. He didn't respond for several seconds, his brain trying desperately to catch up with this beautiful sensual assault, before her words clicked.

"You mean it?" he breathed, a grin dancing its way across his lips as waves of joy cascaded through him.

"Of course, you great fool, I love you!" she replied, leaning down to kiss every bit of him she could reach.

Words didn't describe his elation; much less did they do them justice. So he settled for pouring all of his pent-up passion into one kiss after the next, pausing only to slip the gold, pearlescent band onto her finger, before fisting his hands in her hair and dancing his lips across her lips, her neck, her shoulders, anything!

"Don't you dare go anywhere near your clothes," she breathed, struggling to keep the joyous laugh from her voice as her hands traced patterns across his toned chest.

"We aren't going to need them for a good few hours yet." She grinned mischievously, eyes twinkling with joy.

"Serrin, did I ever tell you how much I love the way you think?"

_**Three weeks later**_

Times changed, the ebb and flow of the force waxed and waned, cultures clashed, ideologies sprouted only to be cast down, newer and more imaginative ways for one person to kill another sprouted from the collective consciousness of the universe all the time. And yet somehow, for all that the galaxy evolved and matured as it danced through the ages, like a fine wine matures in a cellar. Some things, very unfortunately never changed.

_And one of those things, _mused Draco Zelada as he leaned against a clean (meaning slightly-less dirty) patch of wall at Mezenti spaceport, is that_ Nar Shaddaa is still the arsehole of the galaxy._

The Arkanian Sith Lord gathered his dark robes about himself, rubbing his gloved hands together to stave off the biting chill that always seemed to follow him about here, that and the smell.

He cursed his luck; why in the name of all that's good did they send him for this poxy assignment?

Yes, he knew the strategic value.

Yes, he'd heard the mission parameters.

Yes, he knew just how much of an economic boom was coming the Empire's way if they could successfully negotiate the annexation of this dung-pile of a moon. Or just how many credits would flow into Imperial coffers if they could get even the barest percentage of a tax on its myriad, shady revenues.

Yes, he knew that whilst Kereniss or even the Empress herself were the Empire's usual first choices for negotiation, his particular brand of charm and blunt bravado was more likely to appeal to the Hutts.

Especially since most of the Hutts here liked to surround themselves with all manner of scantily-clad exotic females from every species under the Galaxy's collective suns. The challenge hadn't been trying to sell the Empire's deal to the Cartel, it had been finding out which dancer, or which slave or which advisor he had to serrupticiously bribe, threaten or sleep with to put the right words in the right ears. If all the oversized slugs' favourite courtesans were whispering encouragement to their masters, then even the most avaricious of the Cartel's slimy sleazeballs were putty in his hands.

But even so, why couldn't someone else have frozen their arse off for this shite stained goldmine of a moon?

Speaking of other people, Draco's eyes perpetually scanned the arrivals lounge for the Imperial Delegation. A smile crept upon his face and he allowed himself a quiet, disbelieving chuckle.

"Imperial Delegation…" he muttered under his breath. "I'm making this sound almost like official business..."

"Well technically..." began a familiar voice behind him, making the Arkanian jump like a scalded Nexu, a practiced hand snapping to the hilt of his lightsaber before he recognised the youthful tones. "It is official business."

"Qai'zon, seriously don't do that!" Draco breathed with a flustered shake of his head. The Imperial Prince grinned and slapped a playful hand on the elder warrior's back as he moved to stand next to him.

"Officially, we're here to formally oversee the final secession of Nar Shaddaa into the Empire, my father's coming and everything."

"The Emperor?" Draco asked, somewhat aghast. "I knew your mother was coming, but I thought your Lord father was out on the front lines?"

"Well there is an unofficial side to every story" mused the rising star of Imperial Intelligence, before catching the Arkanian's gaze with a playful glint in his eyes. "Just like the unofficial reason for this visit is so we can all get drunk out of our wits and paint the town red to celebrate your brother's upcoming nuptuals"

"Indeed" Draco chuckled, settling himself back against the wall, resting his hands behind his head and settling into a very well-practiced pose of pure, unadulterated nonchalance.

"Oltenon owes me a hundred credits." He smiled contentedly.

"Don't tell me somebody actually bet _against_ Kereniss and Serrin tying the knot?"

"No, he bet against them having the stag party here."

The Zabrak took a sampling whiff of the air and promptly pulled up the slate-grey bandana around his neck to cover his nose and mouth. Even though the older man couldn't see the most of the prince's face, he didn't have to. His eyes were doing all the cringing for it.

"I can see his point."

Draco nodded sagely, before raising an inquisitive eyebrow.

"So where are they all then?" he asked, his eyes darting about the lounge again like a pair of miniscule dervishes.

"Well most of them should be here any moment now" replied Qai'zon, his eyes joining the Arkanian's in their search.

"Mum, Dad, Auggie, Jaesa, Kira and Odelio were coming straight from Dromund Kaas in Dad's old _Fury…_"

"I'm sure your parents will have been enjoying plenty of nostalgic sex on the way over here then." Draco interrupted with a waggle of his eyebrows that made Qai'zon shudder with revulsion.

"That was payback for you scaring me half to death."

"Yes but seriously, I didn't need that image."

"Neither did I, and I was there." Came a feminine voice from somewhere to Draco's left, making the Arkanian leap upright for the second time in the last quarter-of-an-hour.

Wheeling about on his foot, Draco had just enough time to lock eyes with the new arrival before he found himself staring at the floor and trying to subtly regain his balance from bowing so fast.

"Your Grace, I was umm…"

"...Timing your jokes poorly?" The Empress suggested, a grin starting to split her features. A sneaked glance over Draco's shoulder told him that Qai'zon was utilising every fibre of his being to force himself not to laugh.

"Something like that Empress." he conceded, straightening up, Vette's smile mirrored on his own face. Striding over to her by-now madly chuckling son, she pulled the tattooed boy into a tight embrace.

"I've missed you mum" the Zabrak mumbled into her shoulder as she held him close, still giggling to himself at Draco's expense. The Arkanian rolled his eyes rather theatrically and turned to the rest of the assembled party.

The Emperor was wearing a humoured expression as he watched Draco bow again before him, before waving him to his feet and shaking his hand paternally.

"Your Grace how was the flight?" he asked politely, both men trying to suppress their grins at Draco's recent dressing-down.

"It felt good to get back in the _Fury's_ pilot chair again." Sahesri admitted, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. "But I don't think the upholstery has been changed in twenty years, my neck feels like it's made of bricks."

"I can point you to a few good massage parlours for that, Your Majesty."

Sahesri laughed heartily, giving a humoured shake of his head as he spoke, "I'm sure I'll manage Draco."

With a chuckle and a polite nod, the Arkanian moved aside to let Sahesri go and embrace his son, turning his attention to the two female Sith who had been standing at the Emperor's shoulder.

"Allow me to welcome you two lovely ladies to Nar Shadaa! The soon-to-be former jewel in the crown of the Hutt Cartel!"

He gave a slightly mocking bow, looking every bit the smarmy tour guide, making both of the Emperor's hands fail utterly to retain their straight faces. Playing up to the performance, a rather frivolous looking Jaesa upturned her nose in her best imitation of regality and extended a slender, gloved hand which Draco kissed, before spinning Sahesri's first apprentice into his arms and over his knee with the grace and fluidity of a dancer. The younger man waggled his eyebrows playfully at Jaesa, who gave up on suppressing her laugh.

"Honestly Draco, I'm a married woman."

He feigned disappointment as he helped the second-most-powerful woman in the Empire to her feet.

"Aren't you all these days?"

"Don't worry Zelada, one day you'll find somebody" offered Kira, pulling the Arkanian into a friendly hug.

"I already have, and somebody else, and somebody else, and their twin sister, and their cousin and their maid, and their…"

"We get the idea." Kira chuckled, releasing him. "You'll be a bachelor until the end of time."

"Naturally, Lady Kira" began Draco, ruffling his hair and striking a dramatic pose, head tilted upwards, eyes pretending to be gazing at the stars in mourning.

"Imagine all the poor, lonely ladies who rely on me for comfort and succour. Who depend on me to show them what a real man feels like for the first time in their cold lives? Imagine the mass heartbreak if I were to renounce the ways of the stud!"

"Oh dear, how could we allow such an atrocity?" came Augustus' voice as the Twi'lek slapped Draco on the back.

"That said, if we got your flirtatious arse married off, maybe the rest of us poor bachelors will start getting noticed." Chimed in Odelio, Jaesa's adopted son making his presence known as he appeared out from behind the crown prince.

The Sith guffawed loudly as he pulled both men into a brotherly hug.

"And speaking of poor bachelors, where's my baby brother gotten to?" He loudly inquired of all present.

"Late for his stag party, I mean honestly, the very nerve of it!"

"As if I'd miss this!"

Draco rather hurriedly shoved past the others in his rush towards the source of the voice. He had just enough time to relish the twin looks of shock on Kereniss and Serrin's faces as they stepped out from the pink neon haze of the Naboo shuttle concourse, before he grabbed the younger man firmly around the middle and gave him a bear hug that would have winded a Wookiee.

"Draco…can't breathe…" came an exasperated gasp from somewhere near his ear, and guffawing, he let his famously flippant brother go, but not before ruffling his hair so hard that it resembled a blow-dried Nexu.

"Well Ker, getting hitched at last" he began as the younger man straightened up. "I must confess, I'm a tad jealous."

"Oh come on Draco," replied Kereniss, with a quite audible wheeze. "You've been here, what? Two months now? You must've shagged a thousand women here already."

With a theatrical grimace and a hand over his heart, Draco replied. "Alas dear brother, my standards are slipping" his pupil-less eyes betraying his sarcasm. "I only managed nine hundred and ninety nine..."

"Honestly Draco," replied Kereniss, voice oozing with mock-chastisement, face desperately trying to look reminiscent of an irate teacher scolding a particularly apathetic pupil, whilst combating the grin that was inexorably battling its way from ear to ear. "You're a disgrace to the family."

"I know, I must atone for my great dishonour" the Arkanian cried, playing to whatever invisible crowd watched attentively within the theatre of his own mind, before cocking his eyebrows seductively in the general direction of his brother's betrothed.

"Of course if Serrin is willing to help…"

The former Jedi snorted. "Sorry Draco, but I'm afraid you aren't my type" she began teasingly, sneaking a hand into Kereniss', which produced a satisfyingly smug smile on the aforementioned man's face.

"I like my men to be butch enough to manage _two_ lightsabers."

A wolf-whistle that sounded distinctly like Augustus sounded somewhere in the background, followed by what was unmistakably Kira's voice yelling, "You go girl!"

"Alas my dear, you don't know what you're missing," replied Draco, voice heavy with feigned resignation complete with a particularly dramatic pout.

"Draco, I can go talk to any stripper on this half of the planet to find out what I'm missing, I'm sure I can manage without finding out first-hand."

"Checkmate!" Added Kereniss, pulling his beloved into his arms and planting what Draco thought was a sickeningly romantic kiss onto her petite lips.

"Awww!" Draco crooned satirically, to be met with a particularly rigid middle finger from his little brother.

Chuckling to himself, he pulled the couple into a rather less crushing hug than before.

"It's fantastic to see you both, especially you _little sister_."

He put particular emphasis on the last words. Truth be told, even though he'd never voiced it before, he'd though of her as his sister from the moment he'd first seen them together: Both snoring away peacefully in her chambers, that first night she'd spent on Dromund Kaas; her curled up on the bed in a fetal pose, him sprawled across the adjacent chair like a dropped marionette, the gap between them bridged only by their hands, still interlocked even in their dreams.

He'd known then that what his brother had found was special and he vividly remembered placing a blanket around Kereniss' sleeping form and whispering the words _"Whatever you do, don't cock this up."_

It was fair to say, he hadn't.

She didn't reply to his little affectionate title, but unless all of his senses had buggered off in the same direction as his common sense was wont to disappear to, her arms squeezed him just that little bit tighter.

"Anyway, before I lampoon my baby brother any further, we should probably get moving."

He turned in The Emperor's general direction, "Even in the heart of Hutt Space, there's only so long before somebody recognises Your Graces."

"That's assuming you're ugly mug hasn't already given us away." Chimed in Augustus, earning an eye roll and a mocking bow from Draco before the 'Imperial Delegation' made its way out of the Spaceport and into the night air.

He and Kereniss linked arms around each other's shoulders, the very picture of brotherhood, and gazed into the blinking neon cascade that was Nar-Shadaa in the early evening. It was moments like this, he mused; the sheer level of affection of having so much of his extended family in one place, (and the radiant thrill he felt permeate the force around him as it was saturated by so much positive emotion), that helped make the smuggler's moon's perpetual brand of scum-ridden, drug-addled, sexed up, arms-dealed, disease-infested, money-laundered, frozen hell worth it.

"Fuck me, it's freezing out here!" came a cry from behind him that sounded suspiciously like Qai'zon.

That also helped.

It wasn't exactly easy to be her these days. That said, it had never been easy being her. The knots in her muscles throbbed incessantly with the pressure of all the billions of souls that seemed intent on forcing her to carry their weight, just as they had done every day for the last forty years. She couldn't remember the last time she had last sat down, much less laid down to sleep.

Her neck felt like it had been carbon-frozen, and she swore that if she spent more time crinkling her face up in concentration, over one nail-biting catastrophe or another, then it would just stick that way and her features would age another twenty years whilst the rest of her aching body gradually shuffled along to catch up. She was well into her sixties, and certainly no invalid; she had lost none of the athleticism of her youth, and could throw a punch or swing a blade with the best of them. Forget that, she _was_ the best of them, even now.

But that didn't stop the creases working their way gradually into her visage. Nor did it stop her hands shaking. And it certainly did nothing to clear the gradual blurs in the background of her vision as her eyes slowly trickled their lazy way into deterioration.

But more than anything else, it was the weight of the galaxy that made her feel old.

She felt the gentle, yet pronounced thud under the soles of her feet, the tell-tale sign that her ship had dropped out of hyperspace, as she strode onto the bridge, vaguely acknowledging the salutes that cascaded around her as her feet carried her towards the viewport.

Nar Shaddaa glistened in the abyss as the distant glare of Nal Hutta's sun reflected off its surface. The aptly named "Smuggler's Moon" seemed to light up the blackness of space just as the extravaganza of neon lights lit up its huge ecumenopolis against the night sky. The Empire had bought this tiny faecal jewel from the Hutts, in exchange for enough ships and war material blueprints to make Cartel Space expand threefold, and with the profit from the tiny satellite's innumerable dalliances in all things perverse or brutal, the Empire's economy would receive a boom that would last hundreds of years, meaning more ships, advanced weapons, more soldiers, more propaganda and more fuel for this Imperial renaissance that was attracting more and more deserters from the battered Republic with each passing year.

"Master Shan, our ships have dropped out of hyperspace," began the _Preserver_'s Ensign, a tall, muscled blonde woman in her early twenties.

_What I wouldn't give to be that young again._ She mused, before turning to give the speaker her full attention.

"Our stealth fields are running at maximum across all ships, neither the Imperials nor the Hutts have any idea we're here."

Satele allowed herself a sigh of relief, that was some good news at least, but she refused to succumb to underestimation. She knew well the price that had been paid the last time she had tried to ambush the Empire.

"Scans show that the Imperial and Hutt ships are alert, but they have not moved from their moorings, judging by numbers we have them outnumbered and outgunned four-to-one."

"We had them outgunned at Brentaal IV for the most part Ensign," she countered calmly. "The Empire's battle-meditation techniques can coordinate their ships so well that being outnumbered becomes a paltry distraction."

She inwardly grimaced as she saw the poor Ensign stare at her own shoes glumly, she hated having to scold her own crew, but now was not the time to play mother.

"Ma'am," came another voice from behind her; the bass, perpetually relaxed tones of Commander Tiros, the Nautolan first officer.

"Our agents on the ground report that the Imperial delegation has arrived at Mezenti Spaceport."

Satele straightened, even now, after having crossed swords with the agents of two different Emperors over forty years, the hairs on the back of her neck still went rigid, as though each tiny filament had turned to beskar in the space of a nanosecond.

"Give me the list Commander." She breathed, trying to keep the anxiousness out of her voice.

The Nautolan's eyes scanned the page, scratching a clawed hand against the teal flesh of his chin.

"Emperor Gujoja and Empress Ce'na have been confirmed, along with the Crown Prince Augustus, and their second son Qai'zon."

The Nautolan released a pent up breath and visibly grimaced, the perpetual smile that Satele had gotten so used to, the only thing warming up the cold, business-like efficiency of the _Preserver_ anymore, had vanished from his face.

"The agents have also confirmed the sighting of Kira Carsen and Jaesa Wilsaam-Kallig, the Emperor's Hands, along with Jaesa's son, Odelio Wilsaam-Kallig. Another report confirms that the Agent known as Cipher 20, from Imperial Intelligence, met the party at their hotel."

Satele ran a hand through her gradually greying hair, with so many of the Emperor's inner circle present, the stakes of this game had just been raised significantly.

"Is that all of them Commander?" She begged the force that it would be, but somewhere within her, a nagging voice that soundest suspiciously like her old teacher, Kao Cen Darach, whispered that it was almost certainly not the case. As ever, her inner pessimism was her wisest guide.

"No my lady," replied the commander, shaking his head resignedly. "The spies also report that Commander Serrin Timms of the Imperial Navy is also planetside, along with Kereniss Simon and Draco Zelada, two of.."

"The so-called _Great Six,_ I know" she interrupted. "Thank you Commander."

The Nautolan saluted and returned to scanning the spies' reports, that nagging grimace still clinging to his oceanic features as he ran a full background check on the last two names. But Satele was far more concerned with the girl who'd come before them.

It was not the first time that the mention of the former Jedi's name sent Satele on a one-way, regret filled foray into the past.

She saw, as she always did, the retreating back of Master Tidas as he pelted onto the shuttle in the Jedi Temple's hangar, his apprentice running behind him, tears in her green eyes, begging her master to tell her what was wrong? Why they were leaving? Why he was angry?

She saw the half-empty caf mug slip from her hands and smash against the floor as she read the report on Serrin's capture, read what those disgraces in Jedi robes had done to her, remembered how she had held her head in her hands for hours as she cried for what this ridiculous war had driven her order to become.

She saw the guilty looks and what she prayed were not mummer's tears on the faces of Serrin's three Jedi torturers as she stripped them of their ranks and packed them off to the Agricultural Corps, fighting all the while to keep the shame from her voice.

She saw the pictures of Kereniss Simon's scarred, elfin face in the black-ops reports, and wondered despite herself if the Republic was becoming more rotten than its enemies, that Serrin had chosen to run away with her handsome scarlet Sith, rather than coming home to Tython, and whatever horrible fate she imagined awaited her there.

"Ma'am?" came the tentative voice of Tiros again, shattering her unwelcome revelry around her. She doubted she had ever felt so relieved to hear her first officer's voice. She shook the last of the images from her mind and nodded her acknowledgement. Now was not the time to live in the past, now was the time to take action. She gave her shoulders an experimental roll, as though trying to make the weight of the galaxy just that little bit more comfortable upon their her bones.

"Ready the strike team Commander, I'm going down there."

"I dunno guys, I've never been much of a drinker" mumbled Serrin, pushing Jaesa's drink-proffering hand away as she focussed on not letting her head wobble, thus betraying how pathetically drunk she already was off of the few glasses she'd already had.

"Oh c'mon Serrin, don't be such a woos" insisted a swaying Jaesa, hiccupping with an air of finality as she waved the glass of purple liquid which Serrin couldn't for the life of her remember what it was called, in front of the younger woman's somewhat unfocused eyes.

"Oh…go on then…" smiled Serrin resignedly, taking the offered drink and knocking it back with one lazy swig, followed by a short series of startled coughs.

"What the hell is in this?"

"Oh you know," began Vette, leaning back comfortably in the booth, voice steady and ever-so-slightly amused as she watched the gaggle of women around her fail utterly to compete with her own lead-lined liver. "Alcohol, Corellian grape juice," she shot the others a devilish grin.

"Grated Jawa testicles…"

Everyone guffawed loudly as Aliya spat what was left of her partly swallowed drink across the table, earning a humoured thump on the back from Kira as her daughter seemingly grimaced, choked, hiccupped and laughed at the same time.

"Not cool, my lady." wheezed Aliya, drunkenly resting her aquamarine head on her mother's shoulder. "I've dissected enough genitals without having to drink the stuff."

Since the half-Chiss agent was far too preoccupied with leaning on her mother to change the subject, a rather grimacing Kira did the job for her, to the welcome, recently unnerved smiles of all assembled.

"So my dear apprentice," she began, hoisting a half-full glass of some rather exotic cocktail from Alderaan. "Your beloved came to his senses at last."

The ginger Sith Lady was somewhat successful at keeping the tipsy slur out of her voice, she was certainly having more success than the rather unabashedly plastered Jaesa and Aliya, but she lacked the fortitude of her Empress and it showed, despite Kira's best efforts.

"It feels a little strange," conceded Serrin, taking a measured swig of yet another drink that had somehow materialised in front of her, she'd long since stopped paying attention to how they got there. "I think we both saw this coming, but to actually have stepped over the thrash….the thrrsh…the tresh…"

"Threshold?" suggested Vette, taking a cocky swig of Jaesa's drink which the absent-mindedly humming drunk Sith failed to notice.

"That one!" Serrin indicated with a wave of her arm, the sort of gesture that wasn't ever needed in sober conversation, yet feels somehow entirely essential when explaining something several drinks deep.

"To have stepped across the threshold still feels strange."

She hiccupped, a tiny mouse-like squeak. "Wonderful, but strange."

"I hear that," began Vette, placing a comforting hand on the young commander's swaying shoulder. "When Sahe and I got married, suddenly everything I had done before felt like a whole other life."

She fixed Serrin with a knowing, motherly look. "I felt like I was being born again, like everything had changed and I was a whole new person. But I wouldn't swap married life for all the gold, rare artifacts, cultural enlightenment and mind-blowing sex in the universe."

"I second this." Mumbled Jaesa, pulling Vette into a sisterly hug which made both of them chuckle and raising a toast which was mirrored by the entire drunken feminine gaggle.

As she raised her glass, Serrin mused on how her soon-to-be husband was doing. He and his 'stag group' had taken a taxi to the underlevels, which she knew inevitably meant Draco (who had already taken over the role of 'best man' for the evening, since nobody trusted Augustus to still be coherent after the first hour) was going to drag them all into the Red Light district. She chuckled slightly, she trusted Kereniss to not do anything too inappropriate, after all, he had always prided himself on having very different tastes to his brother (which Draco had always taken with an affectionate roll of the eyes and a falsely ominous promise of _'I'll make a player out of you yet')._

But she hoped that things weren't going to be too wild for the Sith Wolfpack, she wanted her fiancée back in one piece after all…covered in vomit, stinking of alcohol and staggering about with the shocked air of someone who's just been spat out by a Sarlaacc of course.(Not that her 'hen group' were going to be in any better state with Kira and Jaesa at the helm) But in one piece nonetheless.

_Is it too much to ask that Draco just takes them to a bar, gets them all a lap dance and then they go play Sabaac at the casinos?_ she thought, before knocking back her umpteenth drink of the evening and letting out a sudden cackle of laughter which turned a surprising amount of heads and made her blush so hard she looked like a Devaronian at a sauna.

_Yeah….far too much to ask._

"OGGY, OGGY, OGGY!"

"OI, OI, OI!"

"OGGY, OGGY, OGGY!"

"OI, OI, OI!"

"OGGY!"

"OI!"

"OGGY!"

"OI!"

"OGGY, OGGY, OGGY!"

"OI, OI, OI!"

Draco's call and his companions' response could have been heard from space in all likelihood. The eldest of the Great Six mused proudly, as he led the hooting, hollering, catcalling, staggering group of inebriated Sith Lords through the bowels of the city, one arm around Kereniss' shoulders, the other firmly gripped on Augustus' arm to stop him from hopping into every strip-club and dance-parlour they strode past.

They had begun their night in a fairly quaint little bar in the nicer quadrants of the underlevels; a couple of drinks, a few bawdy jokes and several toasts of congratulations to their red-headed compatriot on _finally_ (the emphasis on the last word being unanimous amongst all present) plucking up the courage to make the first step into married life.

Draco grinned at the recent memory of the quiet disappointment in all their eyes when they'd thought this was all he'd planned for their bachelor party…before a small army of strikingly gorgeous Nautolan, Twilek and Falleen strippers had invaded the bar at Draco's pre-planned bequest (and at the expense of his own rather deep pockets and _regular customer _discount), and the night had begun in earnest.

Almost immediately four of the exotic dancers had dragged a rather overwhelmed Augustus into a back room and given him a private dance; which had had the intended side effect of making them all laugh themselves hoarse when the heir to the Empire staggered dreamily out of the room again half-an-hour later, covered in lipstick marks and what was unmistakably one girls' holo-frequency number scribbled on the back of his hand, and another girls' golden bikini top dangling around his neck…and the unintended yet inevitable side effect of making the drunken prince try to dive into every strip-joint on the entire moon.

And now, several hours, several dozen more drinks, one fistfight, three run ins with club bouncers resulting in two cases of mind-tricking and the aforementioned fistfight, three lap-dances apiece and in Draco's case, one disappointingly quick dalliance in the act of love in the back-room of a strip-club later, here they were.

"OGGY OGGY OGGY" shouted the Arkanian again, stirring up another round of responses from his fuddled fraternity whilst he snaked a quick glance over his shoulder to check they were all still on their feet. Qai'zon was practically skipping along, the night's extremities seemingly having not fazed him at all, whilst Odelio clung to the prince desperately as his legs seemed intent on turning to (as Augustus had so eloquently put it in one of those priceless jokes that really only sounds funny when you're practically under the table) "The jelly side of the force." But the seemingly constant defiance of his sense of balance hadn't stopped Odelio from grinning like a madman the entire way here.

Kereniss had been roving through the neon-lit streets like this night was his last. That said, Draco had been incessantly, yet affectionately referring to the party as his little brother's final moments of _"truly being alive."_

Followed by several, monologues about how Ker was about to "_fall headfirst into the deep, dark pit of monogamy, babies and a gradual yet inexorable decline in sex drive"_ each foray into thespianism in the previous bar had been accompanied by twin gasps of fake emotion from the two Togruta dancers perched seductively on each of the elder Sith's knees….or were they Nautolan?...Draco couldn't remember. Either way from where the Arkanian was standing, his little brother's wide-eyed, wide-smiled expression was exactly what the doctor ordered.

"Thanks for being my substitute best man," Ker accounced, casting a wry look at the 'official best man' who was still fingering the gold bikini top around his neck and slurring the words 'It's okay, Daesha gave me permission…'

Kereniss tightened his perpetual hug on his elder brother and hiccupped throughout his affirmation: "Nobody knows how to party like you Draco."

"I don't know how to party like me" Draco countered, ruffling Kereniss' hair. "I can never remember how I do it." The party guffawed loudly as the silver-haired Sith guided them into their tenth bar of the evening.

Taking up a booth at the back of the bar, Augustus managed to find his feet for the first time in the last hour and, with a slurred mumble that sounded something like "First round's on me" strode to the bar with a surprising level of balance, one that Qai'zon joked was entirely unbecoming of one who had put so much effort into getting wasted.

Draco watched the crown prince's retreating, leather clad back as he shuffled away, trying to listen in across the deep bass thumping of the bar's loudspeakers, blasting out some beat from a lesser-known Coruscanti artist, to find out what ungoldly mixture Auggie was ordering for their umpteenth round of shots that evening. However, his plan was foiled by the rumbling, distorted bass of the club's music, so instead of words, not that Auggie was in too much of a talkative state, he just watched as the barman cocked an eyebrow at the crimson-skinned Twilek beore reaching up and producing a rather elaborate purple bottle filled with force-knew-what, topped with a golden figurehead of a miniature krayt dragon.

Draco turned away with a characteristic shrug, clearly Augustus had reached the stage of drunkenness that suddenly gave one an appreciation for more cultured, bourgeoisie forms of liquor. Thankfully, unlike most individuals who reach that stage, mused the blank-eyed man, Augustus was as rich as he was thirsty.

"So Ker," he began. "Regale us again with the tale of how you met your soon-to-be-blushing bride?"

"Looking for tips?" the younger man countered with a grin.

"No, he's looking to point out all your cliché romantic bollocks" added Odelio, a tad slugglishly with an equally addled smile, accompanied by a 'hear-hear' from the, as ever, serene and iron-livered Zabrak sitting on his left.

Kereniss shook his head dramatically, before leaning upon the table and gesticulating in his best 'storytelling' pose.

"Well you see lads…it all began on Ord Mantell…"

Draco would later muse, in his more sober, introspective and self-critical moments, that perhaps him asking for his brother's story was where everything went wrong. He would spent endless hours in the coming weeks alone in his quarters on one of the Great Six's many hidden retreats, fighting back the tears that seemed to cascade down his face in an endless waterfall of unbowed, unbent and unbroken emotion, all the while cursing himself for asking for that one story, the tale of the night the first link was forged in Kereniss and Serrin's chain.

Because if Draco Zelada had not, in that single, cursed moment, taken his eye off of the prince and turned his attention to his scarlet sibling, there was a chance that his blank, cloud-white eyes might have seen the group of people sitting next to Augustus at the bar.

He might have seen how their eyes kept darting towards the drunken group of Imperials, out from under their dull, weathered hoods.

He might have seen them whisper amongst themselves, an innocent enough action, were it not for the furtive glances they kept shooting their way.

He might have seen their lightsabers.

"Lord Dryzell, Lady Synn, something's not right." Came a sudden exclamation from the _Skyproud_'sensign, causing the Falleen to snap back into reality from his quiet meditation in front of the viewport of the ship he had temporarily inherited from his soon-to-be sister in law. On the far side of the room, he saw his sister shoot him a furtive, worried glance, before they both rushed over to the Ensign's monitor, as the officer's fingers danced across the keyboard in a desperate attempt to return life to the suddenly dead screen.

"What is it?" replied Dry'zell in a worried tone.

_Why tonight? _He begged of his own conscience, _of all nights why this one?_.

"The comms are down my Lord, something's jamming us."

"Lord Dry'zell, incoming signals…" that was all the ship's communication's officer had time to say before her monitor exploded, showering the bridge in shards of glass like a hail of razors and throwing the poor girl across the room, landing with a sickening _crunch_ against the wall.

She didn't get up.

The Falleen sprang into action, leaping up towards the main viewport with the agility of a Wookie in the treetops, barking out orders as he went.

"Activate thrusters, get us out of our moorings now! Divert all non-essential power to topside deflector shields, get the crews to their guns…"

The Sith Lord was thrown from his feet before he could finish his sentence as the entire ship was rocked by a huge explosion, blooming out of the port side of the Star-Destroyer like a giant, orange flower of death.

"Lord Dryzell, we've lost half of our port-side missile batteries!" Came a cry from one direction.

"Signals closing on us my Lord, enemy ships moving into attack formation."

"They came out of nowhere!"

"There's so many of them!"

"We're all going to die!"

But Dry'zell didn't really hear any of their anguished cries. The only voice that rang about him was the one inside his own mind, beating the words he most dreaded on tonight of all nights against the edges of his brain.

_The Republic is here._


	3. Part 2: A Night to Forget

Part 2: A Night to Forget.

Truth be told, Odelio wasn't really any stranger to drink. That said, there was drink and then there was being at a stag party with Lord Draco Zelada at the helm. He'd be lying through his teeth if he said he wasn't enjoying himself, however he'd also be lying if he said that he hadn't already consumed enough alcohol to knock out a Wookiee (He'd seen Lord Arrryyn drink at the Emperor and Empress' last wedding anniversary, the results hadn't been pretty, but they'd been blissfully brief).

However, seeing as the obligatory minimum intake of alcohol at such a magnum opus of a bachelor party was enough to make a Vornskr tap-dance, Odelio Wilsaam-Kallig quite happily drained yet another glass of Wossisname.

They had all resorted to calling their various cocktails either this, or another appropriate title, due to the fact that they had all long forgotten exactly what they were drinking, or they simply could not pronounce it: Augustus' Correllian Screwdriver was now Wossisface. Qai'zon's Bloody Mando had taken on the title of Whaddayacallit. And Draco was now waxing poetic about how his drink; 'The Purple Lightsaber' was henceforth to be known as wossHERname, since he only allowed feminine things into his throat.

"Well there was that one time on Cato Nemoidia…" began Kereniss, between swigs.

"Doesn't count!" Draco had replied a little too loudly, before sinking back into his chair with a defeated slump and a resigned mumble that sounded oddly like "Well he looked like a woman…" Odelio knew better than to push the matter further.

As the last remnants of his glass' forgotten contents wound their way down his throat, Odelio cast his eyes about the bar. He didn't have the faintest clue why, but the hairs on the back of his neck refused to stand at ease. He'd dismissed the feeling of being watched earlier on, with the internal excuse of _'we're five Imperials in a bar, of course somebody's paying attention'_, washed down by the inherent carelessness that comes from being far-too-many drinks deep. Yet now, all of a sudden, something seemed amiss.

His gaze was still hazy, and the bar's various patrons were blurring together in his peripheral vision, and even his connection to the force seemed distant, like a voice calling to him across a canyon; the echoes bouncing across the walls of his mind, clear and crisp as a sunset on Alderaan, but always a half-second too late.

So when a tall man in a grey, hooded cloak knocked into their table in what appeared to be a very drunkenly desperate attempt at walking straight on his way to the bathroom, Odelio didn't even register it for at least a few seconds, before he found his eyes following the seemingly inebriated man towards his destination. Something about him wasn't right, though the creator alone knew why as far as Odelio was concerned, all he knew was that each step the man took away from him gave the tiniest of tickles up his spine, as though an atom had chosen to dance its way up through his muscles whilst wearing stilettos, and it was sobering him up by the second.

Glancing back to his compatriots to make his excuses, Odelio heaved himself out of his chair onto feet that were quite alarmingly steady for one who had drunk so much, and walked tentatively towards the men's restrooms, into which his mark had only a second ago disappeared. Something was wrong, that much he knew, but the extent of just how wrong it all was, was a subject he was more than keen to not find out, yet his feet carried him forwards, one tentative step at a time, until an arm seemed to shoot out of the darkness of an alcove barely a yard from the restroom door, stopping him in his tracks. Odelio thanked whatever gods existed that it had been alcohol and not caffeine that he'd been heartily consuming, else he might've jumped for a lightsaber instead of stopping.

"Hey, Imperial," came a gruff, flanged voice, as its owner, a short but rather impressively horned Devaronian stepped out of the alcove. "You wanna buy some deathsticks?"

"You don't…" began Odelio tersely, a hand pausing in its usual, practiced arc before the glassy eyes of the dealer (it was not the first time he'd pulled that stunt this particular evening), when he caught sight of his target's compatriots, still at the bar, hoods up, clearly all staring in the direction of his comrades. An idea danced its way across his, by now, terrifyingly sober mind.

"You don't want to sell me any deathsticks," he began again, watching how the dealer's eyes misted over as he waved his hand before him. "But those four at the bar want some."

He didn't even need to point, his victim knew who'd been selected.

"I don't want to sell you any deathsticks, but those four at the bar want some," the Devaronian echoed with an audible slur, eyes trickling back into focus.

"Good man," said Odelio, patting the lowlife on the back and giving him a gentle prod in the right direction. Inwardly thanking the maker that in all their divine wisdom, they'd not graced this particular junkie with the brains they gave a Bantha.

Retreating back into the shadowy alcove so recently occupied by the mind-tricked alien, Odelio watched as his unwitting proxy approached the group, whilst keeping another eye on Augustus, who still sat quietly on the far side of the four strangers, waiting as the barman took his sweet time getting to him. The younger man watched as the dealer began to harass the stranger nearest to him, causing the now irate barfly to turn in his direction, and without ever realising it, allow just the barest hint of silver to flash for a nanosecond out of the confines of his robe.

Odelio's eyes narrowed for a heartbeat, then went incredibly wide as his brain processed a million rather alarming things at once, which his thoughts managed to filter broadly into three words.

_Lightsaber._

_Jedi._

_Fuck._

"Don't move."

He felt the presence behind him a moment before he heard the voice, and cursed himself internally. He'd forgotten his mark, he'd left his back to the door. Raising his hands silently to shoulder height, he cast an eye over his shoulder; The man whom he'd followed to the restroom had now abandoned all disguise, his grey cloak hung open revealing all-too familiar Jedi battle armour beneath, and in a single, slightly wrinkled but clearly quite capable hand, he held an as-yet inactive lightsaber.

"There is an easy way and a hard way that we can do this Sith," began the Jedi calmly, his aged face broke into a cascade of new wrinkles when he spoke, but for all that this man was clearly in his sixties, Odelio was not about to underestimate him. The Sith Order's brightest stars might be in its youngest generations, but the Jedi were living examples of how venerability and deadliness went hand in hand. "Hand me your lightsaber, stay quiet, and I swear you won't be harmed."

Odelio scanned the other man in his peripheral vision, desperately searching for an advantage. If the Sith went for his lightsaber, he'd be dead before he drew it, he knew, but there had to be something. Suddenly a glint of gunmetal silver caught Odelio's eye, a few metres behind his opponent. He forced himself to supress a grin, this was about to get very interesting.

"Much as I would trust you to keep your word Jedi," began Odelio, with only a minor tang of sarcasm, he'd not forgotten what had happened to his birth parents at the Republic's idiotic hands. "I'll have to decline."

"Then you leave me no choice boy," replied the much older man, activating his lightsaber, the telltale whoosh of which was lost utterly in the rather loud ambient noise of the bar. "I am sorry for this."

"No, trust me, I'm the one who ought to apologise" replied Odelio with a flick of his fingers, before the garbage bin that had gone ignored by his enemy slammed into the Jedi from behind, sending his foe flying across the bar and into the far wall with a dull thud.

Odelio caught sight of his compatriots, who had shot to their feet at the sight of the airborne Jedi and yelled at the top of his lungs, activating his own scarlet lightsaber as he did so.

"AMBUSH!"

Three things happened in the space of two seconds that turned what had been the ultimate bachelor party into a living nightmare.

First, Augustus, having risen to his feet in alarm, swooned heavily as he went for his lightsaber, before collapsing into the bar, smashing his half-empty glass under him.

Then, as if the catatonic Sith was their cue, no less than fifty of the bar's patrons drew blasters, knives, swords, and in the case of the four Jedi at the bar, lightsabers as they rounded on the inebriated Imperials in the booth, who were halfway to their own weapons.

And then, as if the maker himself were weighing into the fight on the other team. The booth which Kereniss, Draco and Qai'zon were still occupying, exploded.

"MOVE, NOW!" Serrin faintly heard the Empress' cry through the screeching ring in her ears, the calling card of the turbolaser blast that had demolished half of the bar and thrown her and her friends from their seats. Hustled into a crouching position behind an overturned table, the young Sith lady had barely enough time to catch her breath before she felt Ce'na's strong, feminine hands pushing her towards the door, and heard the telltale blare of Republic standard-issue blaster rifles and the gradually nearing whoosh and clash of lightsabers colliding.

"I can fight!" she insisted, half struggling against the Twi'lek's guiding hand as the Dragon Queen shoved her towards the door, firing blasts over her shoulder as she went, picking off a handful of the Republic commandos that were now pouring into the bar from the gaping wound in the wall.

"I know you can, but we need to leave this to Kira and Jaesa." Ce'na insisted, her voice calm, like the eye in the storm that had engulfed them. "She's here."

The "Dragon Queen's" words were ominous enough to convey her message without needing clarification, but as though the hairs on the back of Serrin's neck were pulling her head around of their own accord, the former Jedi chanced a look behind her. Smoke obscured most of the ruin of the bar, punctuated by a red and blue crossfire as the haphazard patrons fired back against the invaders, to little avail. But at the centre of it all, the smoke swirling around them like a cyclone, she could clearly make out the Emperor's Hands ducking, weaving and lashing out, saberstaffs whirling about like twin kaleidoscopes of death.

A single woman stood between them, holding them both at bay seemingly without effort, sixty-something year old bones dancing with the speed and skill of a teenage ballerina, a blue saberstaff spinning through her hands with a fluidity born from decades of experience as it sang it's song of death against the harsh harmony of its red and emerald cousins.

"Master Satele…" was all Serrin had time to exclaim before Vette hustled her out of the door, and the clash of the she-titans was lost from her view.

"Come on!" began Empress Ce'na, casting a scanning look up the alley before her, thanking the maker that it was clear. "We need to head to the hotel, regroup with Sahesri and the boys."

Serrin's head bolted upright, her eyes wild with sudden terror, in the confusion of the barfight she'd forgotten her fiancée.

"Kereniss…where is he! Have they gone after him too? I…" she didn't have time to continue, The Empress' arms clamping around her shoulders had chased her words right out of her mouth.

"Serrin, calm down!" she began, her voice sharp but not unkind, like a mother trying to reprimand a scared child. "Ker is going to be fine, he's one of the best fighters of this generation, and he's got his brother, two of my sons and Odelio with him."

The Empress allowed a small chuckle into her voice. "They'd need the entire Jedi Order to take the five of them at once."

Serrin allowed herself a small smile as she was released from her grip. Nodding her silent thanks to the Dragon Queen, she pulled her lightsaber from her belt and activated it; The emerald blades of her saberstaff flashed to life, the glow catching the green crystal on her engagement ring, lighting it up like a beacon in the night. A tidal wave of memories flashed through her mind, just as they did that day by the training grounds on Naboo, a wave that washed her 'damsel in distress' mantle from her shoulders, where it had perched briefly for the last ten minutes. It was as though the ring itself was feeding her strength, or was it her connection to Kereniss through the force? She didn't know, all that she knew was that her scarlet-haired lover was out here somewhere in this half-frozen urban hell, and she was going to find him.

"There they are!" came a cry from somewhere to Serrin's left. The Skyproud's commander looked up to see three republic commandos appear from a side alley, their white armour glinting in the moonlight, their blasters levelled at her and The Empress. Serrin dropped into a defensive stance, her blade swirling out in front of her like a Viper shadowing its prey.

"Drop your weapons Imperials!" shouted one of the soldiers, the harsh voice given new depths by the flanging static of his helmet mic. It was a voice that was clearly used to not repeating itself.

Serrin tensed, sizing up her marks. But before she could formulate exactly how to demolish the three black-ops soldiers cornering her, the choice was taken out of her hands; three loud blasts rung in her ears, three flashes of red streaked across her vision for a nanosecond, and the republic soldiers crumpled like dropped marionettes; holes rent open in two helmets and a breastplate. It was artfully done.

"Only two headshots, I'm getting sloppy." mused Aliya as she stepped out of her sniping position at the bar's entrance, a smoking pistol in each hand. "Come on, we haven't got all night."

Nodding their thanks, the three women fell into a practiced V-formation, and took off into the night.

"Lord Dry'zell, enemy fighter craft closing on our port side!"

"Sir, Shields at sixty per-cent!"

"My Lord, Republic cruisers at twenty kilometres and closing!"

Dry'zell gripped the rail in front of the viewport to steady himself against the near incessant underfoot rumblings caused by scores of laser blasts cascading into the Skyproud's impressive, but now incredibly strained shield array. He stared out into the void with the twitching gaze of a madman, cataloguing the position of every Republic ship, calculating odds of success, taking stock of casualties, trying desperately to formulate a battle plan as the ships of the 78th Elite Fleet, the pride and joy of his sister-to-be, were caught with their trousers down and flogged mercilessly by the seemingly endless numbers of Republic ships.

"Ensign, give me a fleet-wide status report." Called out Tiaba from next to him, her voice clear and level. How his sister managed to keep such a calm demeanour all the time frankly boggled his mind, but Dry'zell certainly wasn't complaining.

"Lady Synn, no ships lost so far, but the _Arcanite_ and the _Dawntreader_ report serious engine damage, they're sitting ducks and it won't be long before the Republic pounces on them."

"Order all ships to converge on those two then" began Dryzell, turning from the viewport, but not fast enough to miss an Imperial Fury fighter squadron blow up like macabre fireworks less than a kilometre away, as Republic fighters swarmed all over them. "Engage tortoise formation."

The Ensign nodded and set to work, but just as one problem was dealt with, the comms officer shouted across the bridge.

"Lord Dry'zell, Republic cruisers are coming up on either side of us, they're going to double-broadside."

"Fuck." Dry'zell's eyes shot back to the viewport, and the colour drained out of his face. The two ships were approaching fast, and the Skyrpoud had no room to manoeuvre. This dream night was turning into a nightmare very rapidly.

"Roll out any port and starboard torpedoes we have left, and assemble strike teams to repel boarders."

_Assuming there's anything left of us to board. _

He knew it wasn't the best of ideas to speak the latter half of that sentence aloud, but something told him that despite that, the bridge crew were all thinking it anyway.

As though his brief moment of melancholy was its que, an enormous explosion rocked the bridge, knocking most of the personnel from their feet, sending more than one headfirst into unconsciousness as they were thrown into their monitors. The void beyond the (as Dry'zell was now realising) despairingly thin glass viewport had been lit up by an enormous explosion; the cacophonous death-cry of a pair of Star Destroyers following barely a second later, as ship parts hurled themselves across space in all directions.

Dry'zell sank to his knees, grasping at his head as the blowback of hundreds of souls suddenly vanishing cascaded into his force-sensitive mind. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tiaba do the same, as though mortality itself had kicked them both in the temples and whispered _you're next_ as it did so.

"My Lord, we've lost the _Gallant_ and the _Alecto_" cried the ensign, as though either one of the siblings needed another reminder. Struggling to his feet, Dry'zell stared through squinting, agonised eyes as the two ships' deaths lit up the darkness, and still the Republic came onwards. The two Valor-class Republic cruisers were still heading at full-steam for their flanks, ready to make the Skyproud join its sister-ships in the great beyond.

Grabbing a comm-link from the closest display Dry'zell hollered down into the microphone for the entire ship to hear.

"Code Red: All non-essential personnel abandon ship! I repeat, All non-essential personnel abandon ship!"

Serrin had left him and Tiaba in command of her pride and joy for one night, she'd told him that they were the only two people in the universe besides Kereniss whom she trusted with 'her baby' as she put it, and Dry'zell was certainly not about to repay that trust by getting half of Serrin's crew killed.

Klaxons blared across the bridge as the Valors came alongside, bracketing them in. Gripping a rail for support, Dry'zell hollered into the comm again, screwing his eyes tight shut in the faint hope that this was all some horrid night-terror and he would wake up back at the retreat on Naboo.

"All hands brace for impact!"

He wasn't a moment too soon; lances of green light slammed into the Skyproud's flanks with a roar like a thunderclap, hammering into the command ship's shields with a seemingly never-ending drumbeat, offset only by the alarmingly sporadic return fire from their own, heavily ravaged batteries.

Suddenly, a streak of silver shot across Dry'zell's vision; a torpedo fired from one of the Republic ships lanced through the Skyproud's shields like a lightsaber through butter, slamming into the ship's sides with a painful screech. The Falleen Sith glanced over at his sister, who was already reaching for her lightsaber.

"Boarding Torpedo," Tiaba mused aloud, shooting her brother a grin that didn't reach her eyes. "The Jedi appear to have overstepped themselves, encroaching on our turf."

"I think it's time we got some own-back sister" replied Dry'zell, pulling his blade from his belt and striding for the bridge elevator, Tiaba at his shoulder like a deadly feminine shadow.

"Ensign, you have the con," called the Falleen over his shoulder, the thrill of the hunt propping up his previously sagging shoulders just as it lit a fire within his heart.

"Hit the Republic with everything we have, we're going to scalp ourselves a few Jedi."

'Draco, I swear to every fucking god out there, this is the last time we go drinking!' Qai'zon punctuated every second word with a blind blast from his rifle, as he fired one-handed behind him, sacrificing accuracy for speed as he desperately tried to run whilst carrying the limp deadweight of his elder brother across his shoulders.

Draco allowed himself a dry laugh as he sprinted alongside him, Augustus' other arm draped around his neck to share the weight, turning around every other second to bat away a laser blast from their pursuers; which from the Arkanian's half-glimpsed peripheral views as he swatted away lethal shards of energy, looked to be somewhere between thirty commandos and half the Republic army. Suffice it to say that carrying a drugged prince whilst under fire in a cramped alleyway was not conducive to his mathematical prowess.

'That's what you said the last time we got shot at.'

'Last time there weren't any Commandos!'

'What about Cato Nemoidia?' chimed in Odelio between hurling a pair of flashbangs behind them, forcing their pursuers to hurl themselves to the side to shield themselves from the blinding light, buying the fleeing Imperials a few precious seconds.

'WOULD EVERYONE SHUT UP ABOUT CATO NEMOIDIA!'

'Please ladies, you're both pretty.'

'Fuck you Kereniss!'

'That's Serrin's Job!'

'It'll be Serrin's job to extricate my foot from your fucking arse if we don't start moving faster!'

Maybe it was their natural boyish tendencies getting the better of them, or maybe it was the remnants of their vast alcohol consumption still lingering in their subconscious after the rather deadly and somewhat sobering incident at the bar, but battlefield banter still came easily to the five of them.

It was that, or dwell on how three of them had been nearly killed by the thermal detonator dropped under their table (the strong oak wood of which had taken the lethal edge off the blast); which had incinerated the booth and thrown them all several yards across the room, only to have to pick themselves up at lightning speed and fight through a wave of mercenaries and republic troops.

Their luck had not fully run out though; the press of enemies in the bar's cramped confines had worked in their favour; funnelling mercs and commandos onto their lightsaber blades, whilst keeping the Jedi at arm's length, a brief bout of butchery and a smoke grenade from Qai'zon later and the four men were out the door, half-dragging their catatonic crown prince with them.

Using the brief respite gifted to them by Odelio's flashbangs, the boys ducked into a side alley to hide; watching as their pursuers sprinted past them, unaware that they had been eluded, for now at least.

As he sensed the last of the soldiers leave the immediate vicinity, Kereniss let out a breath that he hadn't realised he'd been holding, sagging back against the alleyway door and brushing the sawdust and splinters from his armour, the remains of the table that had been their saviour.

'I've been wondering,' mused Qai'zon across from him in a breathless but thankfully mirthful voice, 'Why did we all decide to go on a binge…in full battle armour?' the Imperial intelligence prodigy let out a throaty laugh that quickly became infectious, the other three conscious men taking advantage of the lull in the chase to find the silver lining in their Republic-shaped storm-cloud.

'Cato Nemoidia.' Replied Kereniss by way of an answer, raising an eyebrow in Draco's general direction.

'Oh for fuck's sake.' Muttered Draco, rolling his eyes.

'Glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humour.' Came a gruff voice from somewhere above them, causing them all to snap to attention; four pairs of eyes shot upwards towards the rooftops, only to see twenty pairs of eyes staring back at them, and the twenty Jedi they belonged to.

'Garolag,' chuckled Draco, in an attempt to sound a tad less intimidated, five-to-one wasn't the worst odds he'd ever gone up against when crossing swords with Jedi; he and Kereniss had once fought twenty knights by themselves. But they'd been sober then. And they'd been the ones doing the ambushing.

'You've gotten fat again.'

'Here's how this works Zelada.' Continued Garolag, his eyes boring into Draco with an almost primal fury, barely held in check by his Jedi training; he'd missed the chance to cross swords with the eldest of the great six on Brentaal IV, and he wasn't about to pass up another chance. 'Drop your weapons now, and I guarantee you'll be able to lecture me on my weight all you like on the prison-ship flight to Coruscant.' The portly Jedi's lips spread into a rather uncivil grin, 'Otherwise, I'm sure there's a patch of grass somewhere on this shithole where we can bury you and your friends.'

'Big words,' shouted back Kereniss, his emerald and ruby blades coming to life in his hands, 'I suppose you Jedi have plenty of time to dream them up, what with all the sex you aren't having!'

'I'll take that to mean you aren't going to come quietly then,' shot back Garolag, igniting his own lightsaber, throwing it's aquamarine glow across the confines of the dark alley.

'Well weren't you the brightest in the litter.' Shot back Qai'zon, lining up his crosshairs.

'Get them!' roared Garolag, leaping from his perch and somersaulting into the alley below, eighteen Jedi on his heels, the remaining one, a Cathar male who had been to the left of Garolag, falling down headfirst behind them, a smoking crater where his face had been. Qai'zon wasn't known for missing his mark.

Leaping upwards to meet his new foes, Draco's stark white lightsaber roared into existence as he swung it in a tight arc towards Garolag's neck, which the portly Jedi barely blocked, before backflipping off the wall to bring his lightsaber down on another one of the Republic's defenders; splitting a Twi'lek warrior from shoulder to groin.

Kereniss had been forced to leap back towards Qai'zon when four knights immediately pounced on him. The redhead was hardly surprised, as the only one amongst his barely sober brethren with two lightsabers, he had the potential to wreak the most havoc in the alley's tight confines and he was not about to disappoint. Blocking one end of a Padawan's saberstaff with one blade, he spun around the Miralian girl's guard and hamstrung her with the other, sending her clattering to the floor with an undulating scream. The look of fear and revulsion took half a second to sweep across the faces of his other three adversairies, but half a second was all Ker needed to drop one opponent; a tall Zabrak with one eye, with a brutal kick to the stomach and hurl his green blade through the shoulder of another; the jade rapier pinning her to the wall with a shriek.

Roaring a challenge, the last of Kereniss' opponents came at him; a huge Wookie with a yellow saberstaff spinning in front of him like a cyclone of raw, crystalline power. Ker was forced to his knees as he blocked the blow with his offhand, the raw strength of his adversary driving him into the ground without any need for the force. With a roar, the furry warrior raised his blade for the deathblow, only to have a beam of brilliant crimson erupt from his chest. The Wook's war-cry turned into a mournful death rattle as the beast collapsed, revealing a rather relieved looking Odelio.

'That's twice this evening I've saved your arse,' exclaimed his old academy compatriot as he helped Kereniss to his feet, taking advantage of a brief lull in the fighting to do so; the remaining Jedi had retreated to one end of the alley, focussing on preventing the Imperial bachelors' escape, rather than taking them head on.

'Techincally the table saved my arse the first time, but thank you all the same,' replied Kereniss jovially, as he retrieved his still-ignited green lightsaber from it's now unconscious target, who slumped to the floor rather unceremoniously.

'Either way, your arse is still in one piece for Serrin to play with,' joked Draco, wiping the sweat from his brow, eyes never once leaving Garolag's, who was death-glaring him from one end of the alley with enough vehemence to scare a Krayt Dragon.

'Yeah you'd know all about arse-play after Cato…' replied Kereniss wistfully, before being interrupted by a playfully terse 'Fuck you.' From his brother.

Jokes left to the side for the time being, the boys set themselves into fighting stances against the alley wall, guarding Augustus' slumped form with as tight a knot of blades and guns as they could manage.

In the opening bout of the fight, eight Jedi had gone down, five of whom had not gotten back up again; the Twi'lek that Draco had bisected, the Giant wookie, the Cathar Jedi that Qai'zon had sniped initially, plus a Bothan Padawan who had fatally exposed his back to the Prince's viroblade whilst trying to stab Odelio, and finally the poor human girl who had only now succumbed to Kereniss' javelin-like attack.

Three more were lying slumped against the alley walls, clutching various injuries; The Miralan girl, choking back waterfalls of tears as she cradled her ruined legs. A Kel-Dor who had received the business-end of Draco's lightsaber through his abdomen, and had gone into what appeared to be a healing trance, holding himself back from the void through sheer will alone, and a Nautolan with a fresh viroblade scar running up the left hand side of his face, his left eye a pulped mess. The latter warrior seemed fairly unfazed by his injury, kneeling instead by the Kel-Dor, his hands clasped together in a meditative stance as he tried to aid his wounded comrade, adding his own energy to the healing process. The amphibious Jedi kept his one good eye open, scanning the five Imperials who had wreaked so much havoc in the space of a few seconds, a very palpable shade of fear permeating his gaze.

Draco turned his head in the direction of the Nautolan, and locking eyes with him, nodded once sagely. Nothing was said, but the meaning was clear, they could all feel it within them, as though Draco's honourable side had permeated the very force itself; We will not hurt you, we do not kick men when they are down. The Nautolan seemed confused, his mouth hung agape in disbelief.

'That is not the Sith way,' clarified Draco aloud, kneeling to rest a hand on the Jedi's shoulder. 'Not anymore.' The Nautolan simply nodded, returning to his healing duties as Draco stood up, falling back into his guard stance; pearlescent lightsaber held low in front of him as he locked eyes with the remaining Jedi at the end of the alley. The eldest of the great six was known for fighting like a scoundrel and loving like he would die the next day. But that didn't mean that honour was out of the question.

But even though the wounded had been spared, that still left twelve panting, coughing, sweating, but still very deadly Jedi, sporting twelve equally murderous glares:

Two humans; Garolag, plus a much younger boy with stark white hair that kept glancing across nervously at the portly knight, giving Draco the impression that he was Garolag's apprentice.

Another Cathar, sporting several fresh scars and three stumps on his left hand where fingers had recently been, the warrior seemed to not notice, leaving all the Imperials quietly impressed.

A huge Talz, who seemed equally nonchalant about his injuries, except his included the loss of his left arm at the elbow thanks to Odelio.

A pair of as-yet unharmed Gungans flanking the Talz; one had armed himself with a matched pair of teal lightsabers, the other had opted for a single weapon, though his lightsaber's hilt was as tall as she was, a recreation of the traditional spears of her people, with a Jedi twist.

Three Zabraks, the eldest of which (the one still clutching his stomach after Kereniss' rather brutal kick), could not yet be nineteen. The trio flitted between staring daggers at the Imperials and glancing out of the corners of their eyes for an escape route, now that the safety of numbers had abandoned them.

Rounding off the survivors was another Wookie, towering over his compatriots and wielding an orange lightsaber who's single blade was at least six feet long, and a short, wrinkled green creature that defied any species classification that Draco had ever come across, squatting on the Wookie's shoulder, twirling a tiny purple blade around in his hand absently as he stared down his adversaires.

The Jedi had fanned out somewhat at the mouth of the alley, unwilling to commit to another charge in the tight confines, instead hanging onto enough space to make their superior numbers count. The opening riposte had been reduced to a dirty brawl by their cramped surroundings, now it would be a real fight. And a voice in the back of Draco's mind wasn't fancying his chances.

'Qai'zon, Odelio, get Auggie out of here.' Said the Arkanian, eyes never once breaking contact with Garolag's. 'There's a speeder taxi bay about a block east, hijack one and regroup with the Emperor, me and Ker will buy you as much time as we can, then we'll find the girls.'

'You won't leave here alive.' Came Garolag's low growl, voice dripping with menace beyond anything one could expect from a Jedi, but the threat fell on deaf ears.

'I can fight!' protested Odelio, shaking off the restraining hand Qai'zon had put on his shoulder.

'We know,' replied Kereniss, taking a place by his elder brother's side, 'but we need you guarding Auggie, they're only targeting our group to get at him, he's the heir to the Empire.'

'Listen to them,' agreed Qai'zon, 'I need you with me, I can't even use the force, I certainly can't fight off that many Jedi alone.' That hit home. None of them had heard Qai speak of his lack of attunement to the force in that way in over ten years. More to the point, Qai'zon had never seemed remotely weaker than any of his siblings because of that. Odelio's shoulders slumped resignedly, his lightsaber blade hissing out of existence.

'If you two die on me, I'll kill you.' He muttered with a forced smile, helping Qai'zon take his elder brother's weight, before the pair of them jogged back out the far side of the alley, disappearing from view without a backward glance, there was no time for goodbyes, not now.

'So Jedi, which of you wants to be the first to fight two of the fabled 'Great Six?'' called out Draco, once the others were safely away, 'If it helps get you in the mood, I've probably slept with all your mothers.'

'MOVE!' was the only warning Empress Ce'na received before being shunted unceremoniously into an alleyway by Aliya, barely half a second before a sniper round scythed through the space the Empress had been occupying before ricocheting off of Serrin's lightsaber and into the night. A trio of blasts followed, all battered away by the former Jedi's hypernatural reflexes before they could scratch her.

It was times like these that The Empress wished she was force sensitive, but since the force had been unfairly selective in picking it's users, she settled for being jammed against the alley wall by Aliya's wirily strong arms.

'A rate of fire like that means there's a team of them rather than just one Sniper,' muttered Aliya, as much to herself as to her leader; the half-Chiss woman racking her brains for any tidbit of long-range training she'd received in Intelligence training.

'No sniper rifle in the Imperial or Republic arsenal can fire that quick, and believe me, my Dad's used them all.' Aliya clarified, fixing The Empress with a pointed stare, 'There'll be at least four of them firing at intervals, Serrin's got the reflexes to deal with it, but if we take a step out there, we're dead meat.'

Empress Ce'na gulped, casting a sideways glance at their other compatriot, who was batting away bolts streaking from multiple directions with the grace of a dancer, her ethereal senses tracking the flight of each blast and guiding her blades to meet them with uncanny precision and balletic grace. But for all that Serrin could make it look easy, the Twi'lek was under no illusions as to just how low her own chances were out in the kill-box that Serrin was acrobatically holding her ground in.

'We need to move,' began Aliya, giving Vette a push through a nearby door and into a particularly putrid apartment block, 'one of those snipers is probably relocating to track us, we need to take them out before they wear out Serrin.' Vette nodded quickly, slotting a new magazine into each of her blasters as she ran, darting up one staircase after the other in a mad dash for the roof, weaving around the building's frightened and dishevelled occupants as they hurried themselves into the tiny slum-like flats they were forced to call home, barring the doors; shutting out the danger with the only thing they could. It struck a nerve somewhere very deep within Vette's heart, seeing the frightened children running for their mothers, terrified of the scary armoured men in the street and the deafening noise of blaster fire and explosions. It was like looking into a mirror, and seeing your own childhood stare back at you.

She wanted to stop.

She wanted to help these people.

She wanted to hold the crying Zabrak child at the top of the stairs close and tell him everything was going to be alright, like she did when her own children had nightmares.

She wanted to tell the poor kid that she knows how it feels to be frightened, but that it can get better. Didn't she herself spend her childhood afraid of whatever trouble lurked around the next corner? Whatever malice waited for her with her next owner?

Before Nok Drayen and Risha.

Before Taunt and the gang.

Before Korriban, Baras, Quinn, Jaesa, Pierce, Plan Zero, Broonmark, The Emperor's Hand, Draahg and Vowrawn.

Before Sahesri.

But for all she wanted to stop, gather those frightened kids close and ignore Aliya's perpetual cries of 'HURRY, BEFORE THEY FIND US!' from somewhere ahead of her. For all she wanted to tell them all that the nightmares don't always last. That the clouds all have silver linings and that it's always darkest before the dawn. That maybe their own Sith hero will appear suddenly at their lowest point, whisk them away to the stars with their own ramshackle crew of oddballs and change their lives forever.

For all she wanted to help, she kept running.

The two women burst onto the roof and were greeted by a blast of clean-ish air, hitting them like a slap around the face, a slap that Vette had no time to savour before Aliya had her hunkering down behind a stack of crates whilst she peered out around them to get a feel of the scene below.

Serrin was still batting away laser fire in the street below, but even from their elevated point, through the rebelliously tiny crack between the two empty supply crates that were providing Vette with temporary sanctuary against any Sniper that might take notice of them, it was clear that Serrin was tiring; the sweat on the younger woman's brow was becoming a flood and her movements were starting to drag; another minute or so and she'd be sniper bait.

Building opposite, eighth and tenth floors, one more on the sixth floor balcony of the building to the left of you.

Vette didn't balk at Serrin's intrusive voice within her mind, after all, her husband's suave tones had rung within her conciousness on more than one occasion when the spoken word didn't quite suffice. The Twilek tapped Aliya once on the shoulder, and was rewarded with a clipped nod to signal that the young agent had heard the Sith too. Silently, Vette held up ten fingers at the edge of Aliya's vision, receiving another nod before the younger woman cast her eyes to the eighth floor of the other building. Casting her eyes briefly above the top of the crate, she scanned the tenth floor of what appeared to be another apartment building, spotting the rifleman in seconds; a wiry man in Republic commando armour, churing out green blasts in Serrin's direction with expert precision.

'Mark on floor eight,' breathed Aliya, cocking her pistols.

'I've got ten.' Vette replied, her own trigger fingers itching.

The agent nodded once, a grin working it's way onto her features, giving away just how much she was running on adrenaline.

'Three…'Vette drew in a breath as Aliya counted, steadying herself, falling into the practiced mindset that had led her to survive all her long adventuring years with Sahesri. 'Two,' she perched on the balls of her feet, ready to pounce, ready to strike back, ready to kill the scum that had come for her family's heads.

'One.'

The two women moved like lightning, hurling themselves from cover at lightning speed, pistols blaring, war-cries bellowing: The sniper on floor eight was dead before he hit the floor; a smoking crater rent in the middle of his helmet as Aliya's custom hand-cannons tore him asunder. His colleague on floor ten fared no better, barely registering the newfound threat before a burst from Vette peppered his chestplate, goring blast-holes straight through his heart. Vette wheeled around to the left, seeing the Sniper on the building next door react just fast enough to level his rifle at them before Aliya took his head clean off his shoulders with another precision blast.

'Three-down, one to go' thought Vette, a half-second before the tiniest of movements caught her peripheral vision; she moved faster than a lightning bolt, hurling herself at Aliya, knocking the agent to the ground as a green streak of superheated plasma scorched overhead, vaporizing the air molecules in the space that Aliya's head had occupied. Hurling herself back to her feet, her compatriot's words about the Sniper's rate of fire flashing through her head, she spun on her heel, timing her every movement with flawless precision and sending a single scarlet blast streaking back along the shot's trajectory, a shot greeted by a scream, shattering glass, and the last member of the Republic sniper team tumbling down into the street, landing with an unceremonious splatter of finality upon the concrete below.

'And that,' Vette shouted in the general direction of the corpse lying in the street, voice laden with victorious swagger as she blew the smoke away from her blaster barrel, 'Is why I'm the Empress, bitch!'

'I haven't been in a proper fight in far too long,' mused Tiaba, as she stood over the smoking remains of yet another Jedi strike team, now little more than a tangle of slashed-up robes, scrambled viscera, and a blood-splatter or three up the walls of the room. The Mirialan hated that it had to be this way; but when she and Dry'zell had found these seven so-called knights, little more than padawans buoyed up on the blood-frenzy of their first, and last, battle, slashing through the defenceless deckhands of the Skyproud's communications centre, she and her brother's hands had been forced. She couldn't help but lament at how low the order she, like lady Kira, lady Jaesa and her soon-to-be sister Serrin, had once been a part of had fallen.

The fight had been a massacre, the Jedi hadn't stood a chance; they had thrown themselves at Dry'zell and her like a pack of starving Wampas going at a dead Tauntaun. For all the fight they had put up, they might as well have walked right onto Tiaba's golden blade.

Events like this made her proud to have defected…not because the Jedi had been killed, but because the massacre had ever been necessitated. Was it now the Jedi way to slaughter innocent ship-workers? Tiaba cast her eyes about the deck; seeing the bodies strewn everywhere, some thirty corpses bedecked in the coal-black uniforms of the Imperial Navy, the survivors huddled together in the corner as Dry'zell tried to comfort them, passing around cigarras and trying to coax the poor souls out of the mind-warping trauma of the last few minutes. These men were not even armed, they'd never actively fought Republic troops before; they'd never hurt a fly; their job was just to keep the comms running. What great sin had they committed that demanded such bloody retribution? Or was that the creed that the Jedi taught their younglings now?; that everyone who flies or fights or even fixes equipment under Imperial colours must die?

It made her sick.

'We need to go now; there's still more Jedi further up the ship, towards the forward batteries.' Dry'zell said slowly to the still-frightened survivors, 'we're going to make them pay for this.' He promised, reaching out a hand to the nearest engineer; a sandy-haired human girl who could not have been more than fifteen, staring at the Falleen Sith with wide, fearful emerald eyes.

'What's your name?' he asked her kindly, his voice measured, even, reassuring; the voice he'd refined over years of teaching aspiring acolytyes, and his own rather rebellious apprentices, Alvinna and Khulmako. It was a voice that oozed patience, and fatherliness.

'G-G-Geria Fyrie, Lord Dry'zell,' she croaked, voice still tinged with shock. Dry'zell smiled warmly, gripping her shoulder tighter.

'Well Geria, I need you to take your friends here and head for the armoury,' he began, 'It's not far back up the way me and my sister came, we've cleared out all the Jedi in that direction and there's a squad of Imperial Marines there, Commander Serrin's elites.'

'R…R…Red Fox squad?' Geria breathed, a tinge of awe and relief permeating her voice.

'That's them, you'll be safe there.' Dry'zell grinned, his smile seeming to lift the scared engineers from their stupor, 'Now come on, we need to get you out of here.' Reassured by his words, the survivors scrambled to their feet. Tiaba nodded to her brother, who immediately fell in with her as they cautiously stepped out into the hallway, lightsabers at the ready; a cursory glance up and down the corridor told them it was safe to move.

'Ok,' she whispered back to the engineers, 'you're all clear, get moving.'

As one, the survivors hurried past her and Dry'zell, pausing only to offer their thanks before disappearing off in the direction of the armoury. Only the girl, Geria was left, a look of fear still etched onto her face, mixed somewhat with determination, she stood in the corridor mutely, one foot forward as though to run after her colleagues, before seemingly deciding against it. She turned on her heel to look the pair of Sith in the eye, a small smile forming on her face.

'May the force be with….LOOK OUT!' the sudden terror in her voice made Dry'zell spin on the spot, barely fast enough to deflect the emerald blade that had lunged at him, parrying it aside and going on the attack, Tiaba leaping forward to join him. Their assailant, a tall, broad shouldered Nautolan Jedi, let out a fierce war cry as he fenced furiously against the pair of Sith; his purple blade dancing against the gold and scarlet. This was no bloodthirsty Padawan, this one was clearly much more refined. A Master.

'Give up Sith, you cannot best me!' roared the Nautolan, spinning his lightsaber in a tight arc that almost divorced Tiaba's head from her shoulders.

'The Great Six surrenders to no one!' Tiaba roared back, she hated that title, but she still liked to throw it in the faces of her enemies, all her siblings did; it was a badge of honour, even if it did make them sound like two-bit superheroes. She darted her blade under her opponent's guard, but he spun away from it, countering with an overhead slash that she just-about knocked aside. They were losing ground, which wasn't something one expects when two of her siblings corner a single opponent. She had no more time to think about it however, when a brutal spinning kick from the Jedi knocked her brother flying; his lightsaber fizzling into nothingness as he crashed into the wall with an audible crack followed by a pained groan; Dry'zell wouldn't be getting up again soon. No sooner than the Jedi had dispatched one of them than he knocked Tiaba's blade aside with a deft bout of fencing and poised himself for the deathblow.

'The Great Six is about to become the rather mediocre four, I confess myself disapp…' he never got to finish that sentence, as a blast of nvisible energy careened into him, sending the Jedi hurtling down the corridor, some forty metres, into the wall at the far end with a sickening crunch as his neck snapped, before slumping to the ground in a messy heap like a dropped marionette.

Tiaba's eyes darted first to Dry'zell, but one wide-eyed look from her brother over her shoulder as he picked himself up one arm hanging limp and useless by his side, told her that her saviour had not been him.

Geria Fyrie, stood stock still in the same spot she had been in when the fight broke out, was wearing an expression of utter bewilderment and total awe, as though she had not fully grasped that her arms were thrust out in front of her, that she wasn't still shaking with the exertion of unleashing so much untrained energy at once, that she had just saved the lives of two of the most famous Sith in the galaxy.

'H…H…how did I…I don't understand….' She muttered, gazing at her own hands in shock…

'I think,' began Dry'zell, with a look of wide eyed wonder that Tiaba's face mirrored entirely, 'that there is more to you than meets the eye my dear.'

'W..what?' the girl questioned, even as understanding dawned in her green eyes.

'Geria,' Tiaba began, face breaking into a warm smile as she rested a hand on the girl's shoulders, 'You're force-sensitive.'

'You ever get those days where everything's so good that it just has to go to hell?' wondered Kira aloud as she deflected another fluid swipe of her adversary's sapphire saberstaff. She'd often postulated on how different people got through combat in a lot of different ways: For the Emperor, it was by focussing himself in the force, feeling the energy emanating from all of creation and zoning himself out from everything bar his enemy and the force flowing through them. For people like the Great Six, it largely came down to banter and verbal sparring, drawing sustenance and power from their sibling bonds, something that made them arguably the Empire's most effective Sith team. For Jaesa , Kira knew that her friend and fellow Hand would cement her memories of her wife in the forefront of her mind and draw on that to get her through the trials of warfare. All of them, she knew were powerful ways of drawing the force into oneself, bolstering one's endurance and willpower through honour, through camaderie, through love.

For Kira it was less about drawing on the force so much as trying to keep herself amused; she'd never had any trouble finding the willpower to keep getting up when she fell, but when she forgot to keep her cool, when she started getting angry, that was when darker things came into the fold. When memories of an Empire effectively forgotten and her 'father's' chilling presence in her soul started to flood back. Those were things Kira kept under lock-and-key in the safe confines of her mind, where they couldn't hurt anyone.

Where he couldn't hurt anyone.

Which was precisely why Kira was spending the prescent moment dodging lightsaber strikes by someone she knew to be much older, much wiser, more venerable and a stronger fighter than she, or Jaesa, had ever been, whilst commenting on the state of everyone's day. Because if you can't lighten the mood in a lightsaber duel, what can you do? She had thought. It kept her amused, and crucially, it kept her sane.

'I've had one or two of those days,' mutters Jaesa from somewhere to her left, parrying another of Master Satele's strikes and dodging under another as she did so, spinning inside the older woman's guard and delivering an underhand slash that the Jedi cartwheeled away from with acrobatic grace. 'Try celebrating your birthday, only to discover halfway through that Darth Baras, the fattest, fiercest, slyest and most underhanded Sith in the entire universe and his reportedly ultra-powerful apprentice are gunning for you.'

Kira allowed herself a small chuckle as she went onto the offensive, trying to capitalise on her partner's opening, but it was fruitless, her every attack, no matter the angle, no matter the direction, no matter how artful or flawless, everything was swatted aside almost casually by the holy terror that was the Jedi grandmaster unleashed. Satele was barely sweating, whilst the two Emperor's hands were drenched in fluid and gasping for air, running solely on the power of the force alone, whereas their opponent clearly looked like she had the athleticism to carry on all night at this rate. There was only so much more they could do before they were bested, and by the glint in Master Shan's eye, she knew it.

'It would pain me to have to kill two ladies who used to be such promising Jedi.' Said the elderly Jedi during a lull in the fighting, as the three women circled each other in the middle of the street. Kira almost wondered where the bar had gone? Where the smouldering wreck of the cantina had disappeared to in the tumult of battle. Had she really been so focussed on the fight, and keeping her own sanity through it, that she had only passively registered the progressive change in scenery as they had fought their way out of the bar, down several alleys and out into a main thoroughfare? Kira snapped herself out of her reverie with a shake of her head, focussing in on her opponent's words even as she reached within herself for as much energy as she could muster.

'Don't be so sure just yet Master Satele,' Kira panted, in between lungfuls of air, 'We don't go down easy, you ruined my apprentice's hen-party.'

She could have sworn that her opponent smiled for a half-second, before a grimace took root on the venerable Jedi's face.

'So I have, but if Serrin hadn't made the wrong choice all those years ago, she wouldn't need to be in this crossfire.'

'What choice did she have!?' snarled Jaesa, drawing herself up to her full height and staring Satele in the eye, 'after you all victimised her for her Master's fall? What fault was that of hers?'

Kira found her strength in her friend's words, as memories flooded through her, of a young, terrified girl, almost catatonic with fear for weeks in her room, flinching in terror whenever somebody knocked. The girl who'd lost the only life she'd ever known, and had been victimised over a transgression not her own. The girl who only managed to find a place in life outside her quarters because of Kira's tutelage and the ever-present patience and care of the scarlet Sith who had whisked her away. Serrin had come so far, not just as the rising star of the Imperial Navy, but as someone who came firmly out of her shell, who could mingle with and laugh with and find a way into the hearts of everyone she met. She was like another daughter to Kira, and she'd be damned if she let anyone, even the Grandmaster of the Jedi…especially the Grandmaster of the Jedi, badmouth her.

'You put my Serrin through hell, Jedi.' Kira said, staring Daggers at Satele, even as she wrestled with her own demons to keep her anger in check. 'You alienated her, you punished her for her master's transgressions, you all but cast her out.' She took a deep breath, trying to steel her serenity as she continued, 'She came to the Empire because somebody offered her a better life. Kereniss brought her up from her lowest point and helped mend her. If not for his heroism, his selflessness in taking her with him, I dread to think what would have become of her.' Kira nodded to her companion, signalling the final charge to come, gripping her lightsaber with all her might even as she delivered her last speech to the enemy who was now hanging her head almost in shame, staring out at them through hurt eyes, eyes that were no stranger to the guilt attached to all this. But this had to be said.

'I should kill you where you stand for what you did to my girl anyway, but to attack and insult her on tonight of all nights…You will regret this Satele Shan, if not by my hand, then by someone elses, but you will rue this day.'

'Sorry to spoil your fun ladies,' came a taut, suave, but subtly angry voice from out of the shadows, making all three women turn in surprise, as an emerald, ruby and pearl glow lit up the shadows of a nearby alleyway. 'But I think my brother has something to say to our friend here.'

The unimastakable white-haired, broad-shouldered, blood-splattered, dervishly grinning form of Draco Zelada stepped out from the darkness, his pearlescent lightsaber held at his side in the casual, almost half-assed grip that added to it's wielder's carefully cultivated air of not having a care in the world, an air somewhat at odds with the mournful tone of his voice. And as though poetic justice had made itself manifest, out from behind his elder brother, scarlet hair catching the neon glow of the streetlights, face set in the stony visage that had doom all but written across it, stepped Kereniss.

'Satele Shan, you have caused the near destruction of my fiance's psychological wellbeing, and on this night alone, have targeted and nearly killed my family, drugged Augustus, the first brother I ever had, slaughtered the men of the fleet my wife-to be spent years cultivating into one of the best in the Empire, spoilt a night that was precious to myself and the one I love, and caused the deaths of hundreds of innocents in your bombardment, all for the sake of taking a handful of Imperial lives, plus defeating whatever token resistance you might have received from the Hutts.' The young Sith breathed slowly, and Kira could see a killer gleam take root in his eye, a look she couldn't help but mirror in her own, inner demons and all, regardless of how strong their adversary was, or just how much the odds were stacked against the four of them. This was a fight that nobody was backing down from, it was time for justice.

'Now Jedi,' Kereniss all but spat the word, 'You have approximately fifteen seconds to explain yourself…and then I'm going to cut you in half.'

The gentle, blunt thud of his rifle's recoil against his shoulder had always been a comforting feeling to Qai'zon. Each jerk of his weapon carried with it a sense of victory, of patience rewarded, from the days when he would go hunting with his father in the Jungles of Dromund Kaas, to his careful, precise sniping at the battle of Onderon, to the hectic, adrenaline-pumped madness that he and his contemporaries had been dropped balls-deep in tonight; hurtling around the skylanes of Nar Shadaa in a stolen speeder at speeds that the naked-eye would pop a blood vessel trying to follow, trying desperately to put down the squad of Republic Commandos that were pursuing them on speeder-bikes.

The young prince inhaled deeply, trying to maintain his cool head amongst the crescendo of cascading blaster-fire raining around them, and the stomach-churning acts of gravity-defying acrobatics that Odelio was pulling off in the driver's seat. The recoil of his rifle bucked rewardingly against the crook of his shoulder and a small victorious smile shot it's way across Qai'zon's features as the commando in his sights fell from his speeder bike like an armoured ragdoll, a smoking hole rent in his chest.

That made seven kills out of a squad of twelve, in the last ten minutes. It was an off-day.

'Any chance you can fire a bit quicker?' came the panicked voice of the Odelio, as the elder warrior flinched from yet another bout of return fire that had gotten a tad too close, cringing in pain at the glass shards that had become embedded in his left arm when the windscreen had been shot-out a few minutes prior.

'I'm sorry, do you want to do the sniping?' shot back the prince, trying to add a little levity to a situation is dire need of it.

'Hell no! I've seen how you drive!'

'Then stop complaining….and what's wrong with the way I drive?'

'Remember Cato Nemoidia?'

'Piss off.'

For all the banter being shot back and forth, both men were starting to panic considerably. Everywhere Qai'zon looked, the moon-spanning city was aflame; the glittering neon lights illuminating clouds of smoke as skyscrapers and casinos burned, Republic troops were swarming the streets in an endless river of stark-white armoured bodies, and surrounding them was the ever-present hurricane of traded blaster bolts, as the sparse, disorganised and often drunken Hutt troops attempted in vain to fight back, only to be cut down by the never-ending tide of emerald volley-fire from their foes. It was chaos, pure, simple, regimented chaos, and it was frightening the normally stoic prince more and more by the minute.

He tried to visualise a happier time as he lined up his next shot. Picturing that whirlwind night of passion he'd shared with Darth Nyax as he clipped the engine of another Republic speeder, sending it and it's rider spiralling off into a fiery demise in the street below. He rooted himself in the image of her body, warm, naked and gorgeous against his own, drowning out everything but his hunter's reflexes in the memory, wrenching his mind from the carnage. There would be time to reflect, to mourn, to take revenge, but not now. All that was important now was keeping himself, Odelio and Augustus, who was slumped in the passanger seat, still moaning incoherently as he fought for conciousness against his drugged stupor, alive. To keep those he loved in one piece long enough to take revenge with him. To make sure he could share yet more nights indulging in the caress of his favourite Mando'a.

'Ni Kar'tayli Gar Nyax' he muttered under his breath, almost breathing the musky scent of their lovemaking as he dropped yet another soldier with unerring precision.

But his calm, reminiscing demeanour was not to last. A deep, bass whirring resounded in Qai'zon's ears, jerking his head upwards as the hulking, streamlined shape of a Republic gunship soared out of the smoke above them, it's cannons blazing streaks of sapphire death at the tiny speeder. Airbursting rounds detonated around them like a volley of pure hellfire, throwing Qai'zon back into his seat with a resounding crash, his rifle soaring from his grip and tumbling down into the street's below.

'We're gonna die!' screamed Odelio, all pretense of a warrior demeanour gone as he frantically wrenched the controls back and forth, trying to elude the snaking contrails of laser-fire peppering around them. But before Qai'zon could offer a retort, an explosion rocked the back-end of their speeder, blooming out from the left engine in a cloud of flame that would have engulfed them had their momentum not streaked the inferno out behind them. The Gunship had found it's mark.

'I can't save her!' Odelio cried, as the speeder began to rapidly lose height, still managing to curl it's way around buildings at the Sith's command, but hurtling towards the ground with a deadly finality. A shriek of pain sounded in Qai'zon's ears and he saw his compatriot topple from the driver's seat across the passenger side, clutching a blaster-burn in his right arm, the calling card of one of the speeder-bikes. The blast was clearly not fatal, but their impact with the ground would be. Swallowing hard, Qai'zon reached for the custom blaster-pistol in his shoulder-holster. If he was going to die, he was going to go out like a warrior, screaming defiance at mortality itself. The way a Mando would. The way Nyax would.

It happened in the flashest of seconds, yet to Qai'zon it felt like hours; he felt his body hurl itself from its perch and stared down the sights of his pistol as his practiced reflexes lined it up perfectly with the Gunship's cockpit, and pulled the trigger. Praying that the force would guide his last attempt at valour.

It did.

The shot blasted clean through the cockpit viewscreen, splattering it with the viscera of the unfortunate pilot, and as though death itself wanted to add some flair to the craft's demise, the gunship spun out of control into a rapid descending spiral, crashing downwards to the street below.

A smile of satisfaction creeping its way onto his face as he prepared to embrace his fate, Qai'zon holstered his weapon and closed his eyes.

'Forgive me my dear,' he muttered, 'looks like you'll have to celebrate the next victory without…' but that was all he had time for as he felt a sharp tug around his waist hurling him into the abyss below. His panic was replaced by confusion when he felt the air rushing about him much slower than he expected, then realisation when he noticed the black-clad arm around his midriff and a similar one supporting an equally bemused Odelio next to him. But it was when he heard the boyish voice in his ear that he started laughing.

'Don't tell me you've given up already little brother?'

'Fuck…' groaned Garolag as another wave of agony swept through him, the wound in his stomach still steaming from where a lightsaber had liquefied part of his intestines. The reason he was still alive was somewhere between stubbornness and a miracle, especially when all of his companions had not been so lucky. The portly Jedi cursed himself for his folly in underestimating his prey. He had been too cocky, felt too secure in numbers, let himself get sloppy.

It had gotten almost all his allies killed, and with each burst of pain searing through his stomach, he knew the force was dragging him closer and closer to joining them, becoming just another of the bodies strewn about the alley entrance, just another tally in the kill count of the Great Six.

It had been Zelada who had laid him low, Garolag spat at the memory; the Arkanian had ripped straight through Zo-Mar and Kel-Air like scissors through paper, the proud Gungan warriors practically offering no resistance to the Sith's devilish fencing, before bisecting Gedruk from groin to shoulder in a single swing, leaving the Talz's ruined body as little more than a few seared steaks on the pavement. Garolag himself had held Zelada at bay for almost half a minute before the bastard had gutted him, by which time the accursed Sith's little brother had sliced his way through Yokkul and Dalv'aar like so much wheat before a scythe, and the three Zabrak apprentices had run for their lives, tossing aside their lightsabers as they did so, and with them, their honour. Garolag spat again, bloody spittle spewing forth from his lips in a spray of raw hate.

Let them run. Let them rot. They did not deserve the robes they wore, or the weapons they had discarded.

'Your Grace, we have a live one! It's Garolag!' came a shout from somewhere to Garolag's left, he turned his head towards the noise, his peripheral vision long since having failed him. A soldier in blood-red armour and bearing Imperial Insignia was gesturing frantically to a figure in black at the edge of Garolag's vision. He vaguely saw the figure stand up from where it had been kneeling, inspecting the body of the fallen wookie Dalv'aar. His sight was blurring, and his brain was working overtime to process any kind of thought through the pain.

_Grace?...Grace?...Gr…_

The figure, a Zabrak in ornate jet-black armour with a pair of matched lightsabers hanging at his side, knelt in front of him, staring into his eyes with a burning intensity that was entirely at odds with his calm, passive expression. Garolag could tell just by looking at the strange man that he was regal, even among the aristocratic Sith, and that he was far above what one would typically expect of such an enemy. The Jedi could feel the rolling waves of emotion emanating from the man, yet they were blunted, kept in check by what he could know perceive as an Iron-hard inner will. A determination and self-restraint not unlike a Jedi, with all the raw passions of a Sith. He could perceive all this, but the pain wrenched his thoughts away before he could place the stranger's identity.

_Grace?..._

'Where are my boys Jedi Garolag?' The voice was soft, yet impatient. 'Where is Kereniss? Where are Draco and Odelio, and most importantly, where are my sons?' The last word practically burned with the intensity of the man's emotions, as though he let just a sliver of his passion, his power, slip the leash…and it was more supreme than anything the Jedi had ever felt before.

And then it hit him.

And for the first time in living memory, Garolag's entire body tensed up, as though fear had sent sparks through his every nerve and muscle. He felt drowned under it, like a child who cannot swim suddenly being dropped in an ocean.

'The P…P…Princes,' he'd never been known to stutter, but today was a day of many firsts, 'went that way…' he nodded in the direction his quarry had gone, 'K…Kallig went with them…Zelada and Simon took off after them…after they….after they did…' he couldn't finish his sentence, so charged was the force around him that he felt his very voice, the very air in his lungs fail him, he just gesticulated madly with his free arm at the carnage surrounding them.

Nothing happened for a moment, then two.

And then Darth Gujoja, the most subtly terrifying being that Garolag had ever encountered, smiled. And it was though the weight of an entire star system was lifted off of the Jedi's shoulders.

'Thank you Jedi, so good of you to be civil. It would have brought me no pleasure to torture that information out of you, believe me…that and it would have taken too long.'

Garolag gulped.

'Now if you'll excuse me my friend, my family is in danger, but don't worry, you and I will catch up soon…we have much to discuss.' The Emperor turned his attention to the trooper who had first spotted Garolag, the soldier saluted crisply.

'Sergeant, have your men take this Jedi into custody, I sense my family needs me.'

'Affirmative Your Grace. Give the 'Pubs hell, and tell them 'Love from the 78th Elite.'

The Emperor grinned broadly as he turned on his heel and marched into the night.

'You can be sure of that.'

'Lord Dry'zell, counter-strike teams are reporting that all Jedi boarders have been repelled.'

'My Lord, Shields are holding at forty-percent.'

'Starboard Batteries are back online.'

'My Lord, our first wave of fighters have been launched.'

'Lady Synn, the _Star of Belsavis _and the _Knight of Roses_ have engaged the _Preserver_.'

'We're holding them!'

Dry'zell tried to tune out many of the voices that immediately slammed into his eardrums as he stepped back onto the bridge of the Skyproud , sifting through the cacophony for all the relevant information he could decipher. The view from every screen was positive, at least more so than it had been. The 78th Elite, plus the rag-tag flotilla of Hutt Vessels surrounding them, had recovered from the initial blitzkrieg and were now holding their own. Six Republic capital ships had been destroyed outright, with four more severely crippled to the point of launching escape-pods. But in exchange for the losses of two Star Destroyers, ships that could outclass any equivalent 'Pub cruiser in their crew's sleep, plus the lives of force-only-knew how many Imperial personnel, such victories were still bitter. Dryzell could not help but fret that this bout of success, this breaking-even, was merely an illusion and any moment now the void would be lit up by a string of explosions, dragging his soon-to-be sister-in-law's ships down into the afterlife like the _Gallant_ and _Alecto_.

He could see his sister out of the corner of his eye, barking orders to each and every deck-hand or officer in sight, whilst trying to comfort the hunched, terrified form of Geria in the corner, who was on the verge of tears. He felt for the young girl, the revelation of her inner power down in the communications corridor had turned her life upside down, and now it looked like that her life, still in its revolutionary state, was going to be snatched from her, along with everyone else's aboard.

He turned away as a fresh bout of casualty reports came in and another neon orange bloom lit up the perpetual night of space, as a third Star Destroyer vanished amidst a nuclear inferno, taking half a score of smaller Republic frigates with it.

'Lord Dry'zell, the _Phoenician_ is lost!'

As though he needed reminding, as another wave of grief speared through the force around him.

He tried to concentrate, to root himself in the force, to reach out to the rest of the fleet. But it was all in vain, he couldn't focus amidst the sea of death and destruction being delt. He felt faint, as though the grief had torn at his very soul. His legs gave way underneath him, only the lightning-fast reflexes of his sister keeping him upright.

'We're all going to die,' he muttered, so no-one else save Tiaba could hear. 'This can't last forever, how long before they start dropping us like flies?'

Tiaba said nothing, she merely held him tighter. Dry'zell managed a smile, he'd always respected his sister for that, false hope was never something she prescribed to. And how more false could such hope get right now?'

'My Lord, Incoming Signals! Other Ships have dropped out of hyperspace!'

The Ensign's shout robbed Dry'zell of all decorum whatsoever and he freely sobbed against his sister's shoulder, her back shielding his tears from the view of their subordinates. This was it, This was the end. He'd never get to laugh with his brothers again. Never see Alvanna and Khulmako become Lords. He wouldn't even get to see Kereniss' wedding. For a single moment, mortality laid its deathly caress upon Dry'zell's shoulder and it took all of his will not to take out his lightsaber and simply end it there. Spare him the inferno or the void. End it on his terms. Maybe Tiaba would finish him off before the wound became too painful? Maybe death wouldn't be so bad? He'd always wanted to meet the Jedi and Sith of old, perhaps now was his chance. Perhaps now was the next great adventure?

He had almost given into that self-destructive thought before another cry from the ensign shook him to his core with the force of its positivity, as though the deck-hand's words had galvanised his very soul.

'They're Imperial Signals My Lord! Hundreds of them!...It's the entire Crown Fleet! We're saved!'

As if to punctuate the point, the abyss was lit up by a string of what appeared to be supernovas as half the Republic fleet were decimated in a single volley from the 78th's Rescuers. Star Destroyers by the dozens were appearing all around Dry'zell's battered ships, screening them from the sporadic return fire and dealing death in droves to the surprised Republic fleet, which was now rapidly trying to break off from the conflict. It was a miracle if Dry'zell had ever seen one, and he, Tiaba, Geria and every single person on every single ship throughout the whole fleet, cheered as one.

'Incoming transmission my Lord!' shouted the Ensign between bouts of joyous levity. Dry'zell nodded and turned to the bridge's main holocommunicator. The static-blue features of the Crown Fleet's commander flickered to life, an uncharacteristic grin on the older man's usually stoic features.

'Grand Moff Malavai Quinn reporting Lord Dry'zell, did we miss anything?'

Dry'zell could barely contain his laughter.

'You could have timed your entry a little better Quinn, but the entire 78th owes you a drink all the same.'

'I'm still as partial to Correllian brandy as I was when I served Darth Baras, but we can resolve that particular issue later. If you've no objections my Lord, I need to deploy a planet's worth of ground troops.'

Dry'zell saluted the Grand Moff with crisp precision, his grin receeding as he thought about the carnage that was surely being wrought on the ground below, and of his family, caught up in the turmoil. He knew they were alright, he would have felt it if they weren't, just as he'd felt it when Daesha had been wounded, but still, the worry niggled at him, even now at the cusp of victory, some as-yet-unseen doom still played on Dry'zell's mind. A foreshadowing. He swallowed hard.

'Carry on Quinn, my brothers need you more than I do now.'

For all that Kereniss liked to display his bravado on a silver platter, the subtle caress of fear up his spine was hardly unknown to him, and was at this moment tickling at the edges of his concentration, even as he locked his face into his perpetual combat-grin. He danced in mad, deadly, balletic circles around his target, who spun effortlessly to parry his every assault, even whilst holding Kira, Jaesa and Draco at bay at the same time. He dropped to his knees and threw himself sideways to dodge first a lightning-fast slash that would have divorced him from his legs had he been a moment slower, and then an acrobatic overhand blow that almost halved him across another axis. The Jedi Master was possessed of a skill that Kereniss had known in a heartbeat far eclipsed his own, it was taking four Sith fighting in perfectly orchestrated, yet seemingly chaotic, tandem, just to make Satele Shan break a sweat. The blue saberstaff she carried seemed to have a will of its own, swatting aside a stab from him, darting to parry an underarm strike from his brother, parrying both of the Emperor's hands simultaneously…this was more than combat, it was art.

He had to fight to keep himself unimpressed.

He locked on that image of Serrin, alone and frightened in that cell on Ord Mantell; the visage he called to mind whenever he fought a Jedi, and it galvanised him to carry on. He came at Satele with everything he had, his vengeance barely tempered by both his own self-restraint and her breathtking lightsaber skills. But it would take more than even Satele Shan's skill with a blade to keep him down, so for every time she knocked his attacks aside, he would spin gracefully into the next, dancing to the rhythm of destruction.

He spun inside her guard as Draco did the same from the other side, but their target was too fast, dropping to the floor with feline agility, she swept both their feet out from underneath them with powerful kick, sending Kereniss sprawling to the floor, though his elder brother was able to throw himself into a backward cartwheel and launch himself at her again, buying time for Kereniss to pick himself back up.

He leaped over his foe slicing at her from overhead as he somersaulted behind her, spinning on his heel to deliver a killing-thrust whilst Kira locked down her blade, but even that was in vain, as she spun her saberstaff in a deadly pirouette, breaking Kira's lock and swatting his own lightsaber aside like a fly.

Finally, all four of them charged at once, each striking a different target on the venerable Jedi, but with a speed that the eye could not follow, she lashed out; parrying Jaesa's thrust at her lower back and battering her with a force-charged spinning kick to the face that hurled the younger woman across the street and into a wall, she spun out of Draco's path, his own momentum carrying him past her, encouraged somewhat by an axe-kick to the back of the head, which left him dazed and on the floor, Kereniss himself had attempted a swipe at the Jedi Master's neck, but hit only air, as she bent backwards with the flexibility of a contortionist, before delivering a strike so precise that it sawed straight through his scarlet lightsaber, robbing him of a weapon and all the hairs on the back of his hand as well, though Kereniss had little time to appreciate this as a third kick toppled him backwards, sending his remaining blade flying from his hands. He didn't see how Master Shan dropped Kira, all he managed to catch was the former-Jedi flying backwards into the same wall as Jaesa.

He struggled to his knees, reaching out for his lightsaber with the force, but she was upon him before he could summon it. She pinned him down to the ground with one foot and readied herself to deliver the deathblow; Kereniss was still desperately reaching out for his lightsaber in the force, but he knew it would be too late. Satele's arm was poised, her gaze stony, he could expect no mercy. He was just on the verge of consigning himself to this fate, trying to call pictures of his beloved into his mind so as to die happy, when he saw it. Satele followed his gaze over her shoulder, just in time to see the Republic gunship hurtling downwards, its cockpit shot-out and blood-splattered, trailing fire and smoke, accompanied by three figures falling in what appeared to be slow-motion behind it.

'Qai'zon, I owe you.' He managed to think, before he felt Satele hurl herself away from him, swiftly followed by himself, skidding to a halt on the pavement as the Gunship crashed to the ground, plowing through the spot he had occupied not a moment before, a cloud of dust and an unholy screech accompanying it as it juddered to a halt in the middle of the street.

'Well that could've been worse.' Kereniss muttered as he lifted himself to his feet, his emerald lightsaber returning to him, along with his adrenaline. No sooner had he uttered the words though than he heard an almighty slamming noise, as the doors of the crashed gunship were thrown open from the inside, spilling forth a squad of airsick, but no less deadly Republic commandos, blaster rifles blaring defiantly.

'Shit.' Kereniss muttered as he viewed the situation. The Gunship had made it's cacophonous entrance slap-bang in between Draco, himself and Shan on one side, and Kira and Jaesa on the other, and it was the latter two who were facing the full brunt of the new Republic threat, as the commandos swarmed towards the shell-shocked Hands. He saw Satele pull herself back to her feet out of the corner of his eye and turned to face her as the Jedi dusted herself off, behind her he saw Draco doing the same, albeit leaning heavily on one leg and cringing in pain. It did not take one with the perception of a Sith to notice the deep cut that had been wrought on his brother's leg, still smoking slightly from the searing heat of Satele's lightsaber. The odds had just irrevocably turned against them and Kereniss knew it. One warrior partially disarmed, one wounded and two too tied up to come to their aid, this was only going to end one way.

Kereniss just prayed that some form of miracle happened before then.

'You have both fought valiantly,' began Satele, voice taught, sagely, breathless, but potent, 'But you must understand, I cannot let you live, and you cannot win.' The words seemed to make the elderly Jedi's shoulders sag ever so slightly, as though it pained her to have to slay warriors of their calibre, despite being vastly inferior in skill compared to her own. 'If you put down your weapons, on my honour I swear that I will make your deaths quick and painless.'

The vision of Serrin, catatonic, helpless and alone in that cell swam before Kereniss' mind, and he gripped his remaining lightsaber tighter. Closing his eyes, he reached deep within himself, to the very foundations of his power; his love for her, the love that set his soul aflame. He would not back down even if it meant he died screaming. He would not accept mercy from a Jedi, when none had been shown to her.

'I think what my little brother means by his stunned, introspective silence,' began Draco, visibly fighting a grin through his pained grimace, 'Is that we're disinclined to acquiesce to your request.' He raised a cheeky eyebrow at Kereniss, who couldn't fight back a grin of his own, before turning back to the Jedi. 'It means no.'

'Using big words to a woman when you aren't attempting to sleep with her? Who are you and what have you done with my brother?' Kereniss shot back, crowbarring some banter back into what was quite possibly the last few minutes of their existence.

'Who says I'm not attempting that?' Draco shot back, earning a laugh from Kereniss and a look of pure murder from the Jedi master, who had re-ignited her lightsaber at the mere implication of Draco's advances.

'You're disgusting.' She muttered.

'Occupational hazard of being me.' Draco replied with a shrug, before assuming a combat stance. 'Now are we doing this or what?'

'I'd say so!' shouted Kereniss, cutting off any response from Satele as he charged for her, fencing his blade against hers as he took the offensive, battering strikes high and low. Draco advanced in from the far side, trying to time his attacks with his brother despite his limp throwing off his footwork considerably. It was a defiant assault for the history books, two sith, battered, beaten and nearly broken making one final grab at victory against insurmountable odds. Kereniss could just picture how the annals of Imperial History would remember their names, maybe it would give Serrin some comfort for his demise? Knowing that her lover died a hero.

But the moment of glory couldn't last.

Draco fell first, his limp betraying him as he dodged a swing by Satele, sending a stab of pain firing up his wounded leg, making him stumble. It was all the opening their foe needed; swatting Draco's blade aside Satele blasted him with a force-push so powerful it hurled the battered Arkanian into the crashed gunship with a sickening crunch, followed by a shriek of agony as Draco slumped to the ground, clutching a sword-arm that was not just broken, but seemingly shattered, hanging limp and lifeless at his side. Kereniss had no time to fret over his fallen brother though, as Satele hurled herself at him with a furious tirade of attacks that he barely parried before a final blow bisected his lightsaber hilt, sending the half-melted metal spinning away from his grip.

The next few moments were lost in a blinding sea of agony and light. He felt Satele's blade slash clean through his left arm just above the elbow, dragging a scream from his lips louder than anything he had ever uttered before, it was as though his whole body was aflame, every nerve alight with searing, torturous pain. He didn't even register the blow that severed his right leg, clean through the knee, so lost was he in the agony of the last wound, he only felt himself start to sag backwards, all balance forgotten, and saw the blinding flash and the infernal, bloody spray gush forth from the corner of his vision, as Satele's final strike scored a line all the way up the right side of his face, pulping and all-but detonating his left eye in its socket. He fell, like a ragdoll, like a dropped marionette, to the floor with a thud of finality.

He didn't even have the energy to scream, he just lay there, sobbing and moaning at the mind-numbing agony. His vision blurred and darkened as he felt his conciousness ebb away from him in spurts, as though the life was being pumped from his body.

_So this is what death feels like_. The thought no longer even felt like his own, so faint was it as it sounded in his brain, like a quiet whisper from a long-lost friend. He saw a shadow pass over him, a figure, bathed in emerald light. He couldn't see anything beyond that, the blackness was eating away at the corners of his vision. He caught a faint, distant glimpse of gold shining amongst the green light that engulfed what little remained of his sight, like a beacon, like a tiny sun.

_Gold….he thought…I like Gold, reminds me of Serrin's hair…._

A voice sounded in his ears, ragged with grief, yet so quiet, as though from a million miles away, so little of the anguished cry could he hear.

'YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HIM AGAIN!'

_I know that voice_…there was the thought again, the one not quite his own, as though his inner monologue was now a wholly different person…slowly slipping away….slipping away into the darkness.

_Serrin…._

And then the world went black.

The grief and terror in the young girl's eyes was almost palpable, and it really did pain Satele to see it. She hadn't been there when those apprentices had driven Serrin Timms catatonic on Ord Mantell, she hadn't, thank the force, seen the look in her eyes that day. But she imagined it would have been something like what she saw in the former Jedi now; face streaked with tears still cascading down her face, hands shaking as they gripped her saberstaff so hard that her fingers bled, grief and desperation jittering and dancing in her eyes as she stared deep into Satele's own, standing over the fallen body of her beloved scarlet Sith.

She had seen that look before, that terror, that anguish.

She had seen it in Jace's eyes the night Theron died.

This is what war does she mused, as she looked into Serrin's emerald eyes, eyes that she had seen so full of life once, so joyous and amazed at everything about the Jedi Temple every day she had been there, eyes that were now barren of any kind of joy, as though they would never hold happiness in their orbs again.

War makes mourners of us all.

'Serrin, stand aside. Don't make me slay you too.'

'NEVER!' the bark from the girl was almost primal, drenched in fury, 'I WON'T LET YOU KILL HIM.'

Satele felt Kereniss' life force ebbing away in the background of her senses, how the young Sith still clung to existence was a miracle in and of itself, it grieved her to know that she had to snuff that life out. The Great Six were priority targets for the Jedi order, kill-on-sight directives on each and every one of them, so crucial were they to the Empire's morale that there could be no chances taken with them.

For the sake of the Republic, Kereniss Simon had to die.

That was what Satele reminded herself of as she steeled herself for the act. This was it. She felt no better than those wretches on Ord Mantell, but this had to be done. The boy had to die, and if that meant killing the poor, aggrieved, terrified girl trying valiantly to defend him, then so be it.

_For the sake of the Republic, right?_

The first blow was easy enough, grief had robbed Serrin of her reflexes, and a single blow from Satele's weapon against her own sent the green Saberstaff spinning away from them. Serrin threw herself over Kereniss' broken body, trying to shield every inch of it with her own, sobbing into the fallen warrior's chest. A final act of love, of defiance, of passion.

Satele readied the deathblow, her lightsaber arcing above her head, a prayer to the force on her lips for forgiveness as she planted her feet and brought her blade spearing downwards.

It never landed.

The flash of scarlet was too fast for even her eyes to follow, one moment her lightsaber was slicing downwards, ready to end this sad footnote in the annals of Galactic history, the next, it was flying through the air behind her in two pieces. Fate had played its hand, but had clearly kept an ace up its sleeve, and that ace was now towering over her, resplendent in ornate armour befitting his royal status, a single scarlet lightsaber levelled at her throat.

'I think you've dealt quite enough damage for one day Master Shan.' Intoned the Emperor, his eyes boring into hers with a burning intensity. Satele couldn't move, her every muscle was held rigid by the crushing power of the Zabrak warrior's prescence, the force within him overpowering her fatigued state. She had been a match for even the greatest generals and flag-bearers of the Sith Empire whilst exhausted, but with the sheer power enveloping her at this moment, she doubted that she could ever equal the man before her now. She stared back defiantly, but his glare was wilting, it bored deep into her soul with the sheer power of his anger, his grief, his love for the children she had sought to harm. In that moment, Satele knew she had picked the wrong fight.

'This battle is over Satele,' there was a weariness and softness to his voice, as though he had personally felt each and every death that had occurred upon this blighted moon, all of them on her orders or by her hands, yet he held his anger in check behind a portcullis of civility. He loathed her for what she had done, this she could tell, and the sheer pent-up rage behind those eyes terrified her to her very core, yet she knew he hesitated to kill her, the grief dancing amongst the anger in his gaze told that tale, as though another death tonight would rend his soul asunder.

'The Imperial Crown Fleet has just entered the system and has demolished your navy. You and your forces have nowhere to run, and even as I speak, Imperial Troops and Sith Warriors are being deployed across Nar Shadaa by the thousands.' A roar overhead put the truth to his words, and Satele craned her neck against Darth Gujoja's invisible grasp to see the dark shadow of an Imperial Star Destroyer emerge from the perpetual fogbank of Nar Shadaa's skyline with untold hundreds of Imperial fighter craft and gunships streaking across the sky to herald it's arrival. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the remainder of the Republic commandos and Jedi on the street, those who had not already fallen to the blades of the Emperor's hands, throw down their weapons, blaster and lightsaber alike clattering to the floor in defeat.

'Within hours every Republic soldier and Jedi left on this moon will either be dead or behind bars. You cannot win, and you cannot run. You can either die here like a dog, or surrender.'

'I will never surrender to the likes of a Sith.' The words spilled from her lips in a wearied mumble, the sheer impossibility of her situation bearing down upon her like a tidal wave.

'I would rethink that statement if I were you Master Shan.' Retorted the Emperor, a bare hint of malice seeping through the cracks in his emotional armour. 'If you surrender, any Republic forces who do the same will be treated as honoured prisoners of war. If you choose death, I will personally hand every single Jedi survivor over to the Hutts, to use in their Gladiatorial pits…along with a generous donation of several rather irate Rancor matriarchs from my home planet of Dathomir.'

'You're a monster.' She spat, balking at the prospect of so many noble warriors facing the prospect of being a Rancor's dinner.

'I'm a man who very nearly lost most of his family tonight.' He shot back. 'I'm a man who just had to watch a world burn as his enemies sought to take that family from him. I think we should rethink who the monster is here.' He took a deep breath, his voice levelling as he fixed her with that burning gaze once more. 'Now, do you have an answer for me?'

Her shoulders sagged and her eyes closed, as though all her energy had been utterly drained from her by the last few minutes. She swallowed hard. The sheer force of the moment bearing down upon her with the weight of a planet.

'I surrender.'

Daesha liked to joke with Kereniss that he was her 'little big brother.' Since despite being several years his junior, she had been apprenticed to Darth Banaton before Kereniss had come into her family's fold. She'd always been close to him, on both an inter-sibling level and because he had spent several years being a reluctant, piss-taking third wheel in her tentative relationship with Augustus, who's frequent jibs and ever-present humour, even when he ended up 'babysitting a date´ as he called it, had actually done more for building her romance with the crown prince than she'd ever admit to him. She still smiled at a particular memory from barely a year ago, of her pinning the red-head to a wall after he'd joked 'stop beating about the bush, jump Auggie and give me some nieces and nephews already.' She'd pinned him for all of four seconds before they'd burst out laughing when she casually fired back, 'Only if you and Serrin get me some first, ladies first after all.'

Looking at the broken form of her brother now ,through the window of the Glory's primary medbay, lying limp on a bed, sleeping off the effects of the huge dose of anaesthetic needed to get him through a multi-limp prosthetic surgery, a new cybernetic arm and leg clinging like alien parasites to the ruined joints where flesh had once proudly stood, she almost found it hard to equate the elfin, perpetually grinning face of her 'little big brother,' to the scarred, haggard, wraith-like visage pasted upon the framework of Kereniss' skull. His eye-socket had been burned beyond repair by the lightsaber-wound, meaning no chance of a cybernetic replacement; the right nerve endings simply didn't exist anymore, consigning her brother to an eyepatch for the rest of his life. Though Daesha supposed that if an eyepatch was the price they had to pay to keep her brother alive, then it was one worth paying.

Serrin certainly seemed to think so, sprawled as she was in the chair next to Kereniss' bed, eyes closed, snoring gently, her hand still intertwined with her lovers' own. The events of the day had finally caught up with the usually unflappable Sith lady, and the knowledge that the man she loved would live through his injuries had allowed her to succumb to the aching need for sleep that had permeated all her muscles. Daesha watched Serrin's chest rise and fall in perfect tandem with Kereniss' own, almost poetic in their affection for each other, even when utterly unconscious. She smiled slowly, they were fighters one and all, they would pull through this. She only wished that she had been there herself, that she had been on the ground to help her family, or at least that her, Quinn and the Crown Fleet had arrived sooner.

'Perhaps one more blade would have made the difference.' She mused quietly, her smile receeding.

'It wouldn't've, but I think we all appreciate the sentiment.' Came a familiar voice behind her as her eldest brother came into her peripheral vision, a sling on his arm and a mournful expression on his face. 'Shan's power far eclipsed anything I've ever felt, aside from the Emperor's own. She could have taken all six of us blindfolded, much less Ker and I after a binge.' He chuckled, but she could sense just how hollow his laugh was, how hard he was fighting to hold his grief and guilt back behind a veil of humour. How much he wished it was him laid out on that bed and not his precious little brother.

'I'm sorry you had to endure all this Draco.' She replied, turning to pull her big brother into a tight hug. She felt his good arm pull her close and she rested her head against his chest, conveying in a simple gesture that Draco didn't have to grieve alone.

'I'm sorry too,' came Dry'zell's voice, as her Falleen brother entered the room, pink lines around his eyes betraying just how hard he'd been crying. 'I was there, and I was powerless to stop this.' He gestured through the glass at their brother and his soon-to-be bride, deaf to the grief that surrounded them.

'Me too,' Tiaba made her prescence known, stepping out from behind Dry'zell, eyes still watering with tears as she immediately wrapped her arms around all her assembled siblings, pulling them all into an enormous group-hug. 'I should've been down there with you…force, I couldn't have borne losing any of you.' They all wept at that, tears streaming down all their faces as they held each other tighter for support. Four of the six, locked in an embrace of sorrow, powerless for the first time in their lives. It was a moment to sober even the mightiest of warriors.

'Well I never…' came a half-murmered voice from somewhere nearby, causing them all to frantically crane their necks searching for the source of the noise, and then possibly the most heart-warming thing Daesha could think of caught their vision.

Kereniss, metal hand stroking his chin, eyes still slightly bleary from sleep, his one visible eyebrow cocked in a pose of unadulterated sarcasm, grin creeping across his face, staring at them with a mischevious glint in his good eye. An identical look plastered across the face of his lover as she stirred next to him, smiling from ear to ear.

'The four of you hugging…I haven't seen that in forever….did Draco finally come out of the closet?'

No attempt at any kind of witty retort was made, Daesha, Draco, Tiaba and Dryzell were all far too busy barrelling through the door of the medbay to hug every inch of their brother they could reach, all of them laughing at the top of their lungs at the sheer miracle of being alive.

Daesha fixed Serrin with a sisterly look as she wrapped an arm around her, taking her to one side whilst the rest of her siblings peppered Kereniss with a million and one renditions of 'are you ok?' 'How's the leg?' 'How's the arm?' and 'How many fingers am I holding up?' though the latter was purely Draco being his usual unhelpful self and earning several playful punches in the arm in doing so. Daesha pulled her soon-to-be newest sister into a tight hug.

'They told me you tried to defend him from her.' Daesha breathed quietly, the sheer pride in her voice bursting at the seams of her vocal chords. Serrin blushed and nodded.

'tried is definitely the operative word,' she replied, 'I didn't exactly manage to put up a fight.' The former Jedi fixed Daesha with a look radiating with emotion, 'but I still tried…I would have rather died with him than go against the Galaxy without him.'

Daesha began tearing up again at Serrin's words and pulled her into another hug, trying to convey her own immense love and pride in the simple gesture.

'Welcome to the family Serrin.'


	4. Epilogue: The Night to Cherish

EPILOGUE: THE NIGHT TO CHERISH.

_The Skyproud, in orbit over Korriban, 1 Week Later._

'Tell it to me straight guys,' Kereniss began, staring at his reflection in the mirror with a grimace as he fussed over the state of his dress-uniform for the umpteenth time. 'Do I look like a space pirate?'

'For the third time, yes, but you know she thinks that's sexy.' Draco grinned, patting his little brother on the shoulder, before Augustus cut him off 'Stop fussing, I agreed to be your best man on the assumption that you'd actually be on time for your own wedding.'

The redhead chucked and straightened the medals emblazoned upon his chest for a final time. It was his birth-father's old dress-uniform that he wore today, festooned with the medals and honours from a score of campaigns fought before Kereniss had even learned to crawl. It was the same outfit that Moff Simon had worn that fateful night on Dromund Kaas all those years ago, the outfit he had been wearing in his last valiant stand against the Jedi, the outfit in which he had died. The uniform had been lovingly restored, the hole in the chest, the calling card of a lightsaber, had been repaired so thoroughly that it looked good-as-new to even the most inquisitive of observers. To Kereniss it signified the end of an old life, and the start of a brave new adventure.

What could be more appropriate for today?

'I don't know,' mused Kereniss with a chuckle, 'I swear I still look like that transvestite from Cato Nemoidia…just without the moustache.'

'Har Har,' shot back the Arkanian with an eye roll, straightening the immaculate folds of his dress robes, 'Now let's get you to the end of the aisle before people start wondering if you've skipped the ceremony and jumped straight to consummating the union.'

'We're hardly late, you just want to chat up the bridesmaid.'

'What can I say? Lady Carsen looks stunning in that dress.'

'She's still married Draco.'

'So was the transvestite, now would you please hurry up!' The crown prince was starting to lose his patience a tad, he might've failed utterly in the alcoholic element of being the best man, but he was going to damn well make sure his oldest friend actually got to say his vows.

'I hope I'm not interrupting anything.' The Emperor's voice, not to mention his sudden appearance in the antechamber that the three were occupying, made the somewhat less-than-dynamic trio jump.

'Your Grace, with respect, you need to stop doing that to people.' Chuckled Draco.

'I'll stop making you all jump the day you stop trying to seduce my Hands.' The Emperor retorted, an eyebrow cocked and a grin spreading across his face.

'Checkmate,' stage-whispered Augustus. Draco shrugged.

'Anyway, since we are so pressed for time, I'll cut straight to the point; I have a wedding present for you Kereniss.'

Kereniss' face lit up as the Emperor produced a box from within the folds of his robes, opening it to reveal eight lightsabers, platinum handles glinting in the artificial light, inlaid with artful filigree of vines creeping around the grip. They were masterpieces of craftsmanship.

'Technically the present is for you, your siblings, Serrin and Augustus, seeing as my son and your soon-to-be wife are so intertwined with you all. Though you and Serrin get the first pick.' The final part of that sentence left a look on Draco and Auggie's faces akin to a child being told their birthday had been postponed by a week.

Kereniss was at a loss for words as he took hold of one of the lightsabers in his good hand, weighing it, feeling the perfect balance of the hilt, how at-one it felt in his grip, before igniting the blade. A Purple beam burst into life before him, its core as black as night and radiating with power. Kereniss had heard tales of Darksabers before, but they were rare beyond belief. To even see one was a rare miracle, much own one of eight. His face was slack with awe and wonderment.

'The crystals within the blades are each of a different colour, signifying the different individuals and contrasting personalities within your family, the black cores, shared between all of the sabers, signify that despite those differences, those unique flairs, you are all one, and are at your strongest together.' The Emperor smiled as he added, 'I mined the crystals myself on Illum, a wedding gift should have a personal touch after all.'

'Your Grace…I…don't…I have no idea what to…..thank you…' Kereniss stuttered as he switched off the blade and clipped it to his belt. 'This is a great honour.'

The Emperor returned the box to its place within his robes and placed a fatherly hand on Kereniss' shoulder.

'You all honour me far more simply by being yourselves.' The words were sagely, and warm with emotion, but were quickly replaced by a chuckle as The Emperor wheeled Kereniss around gently and pointed him towards the open door, beyond which a sea of witnesses had gathered on the bridge of the Skyproud in orderly rows to witness the union about to begin, with the Great Six and the Imperial Royal family occupying the front rows and gesticulating impatiently for them to hurry up.

'Now go start your adventure,' the Emperor said, as Kereniss bowed low before making his exit, with Augustus mouthing a _'thank you'_ to his father as he quickly followed in his friend, who was striding towards the front of the bridge, where Darth Consance stood officiating and trying not to cry, whilst his assembled family and friends cheered.

Draco smiled at the sight as he watched from the antechamber, seeing his baby brother all grown up. He was about to march proudly in his brother's wake when he saw a tight frown creep across the Emperor's face. Draco's shoulders sagged briefly, he'd seen this conversation coming, and whilst he knew it was nothing of any real consequence, he was still irritated that it was keeping him from being at his brother's side. Serrin would be coming up the aisle any minute now.

'Draco, did you look into the matter we discussed?' the Emperor's voice was solemn, and edged with a tinge of worry.

'I did Your Grace, you were right, during the battle, the Republic managed to briefly hack into Kereniss' personal intelligence logs on the Skyproud's mainframe and copied across a decent amount of information before we were able to shut down the signal.' Draco smiled reassuringly though as he saw the Emperor's face fall. 'Don't worry my Lord, the information was nothing of any consequence.'

'What was it?'

'Some data from a Navy/Intelligence think-tank a few months ago, crazy schematics, millennia ahead of the technology we have today. I swear those eggheads are off their nuts.' Draco gave a nonchalant shrug as he heard the bridal march start playing, with Serrin, resplendent in a stark-white gown walking up the aisle, practically glowing with joy as she stared at Draco's gobsmacked little brother, whose face was reminiscent of one looking through the gates of paradise.

'So nothing of any value, that's a relief.' The Emperor's voice dragged Draco back into the present and he saw the ruler of the Empire gesture towards the bridge. Draco whispered back jovially as they walked together towards the happy couple at the front of the congregation, who were reciting their vows to each other in cracking voices as they fought to keep their joy contained.

'One heart. One Soul. One Voice. One life. This I pledge to you, with my love from this day until my last and beyond'.

'There was some outrageous sketch for a battlecruiser a hundred times the size of our Star Destroyers.' Draco practically laughed, 'Something called _Project Executor_. Far beyond current technology, even if the Republic got ahold of the idea, it'd take them at least three thousand years to make use of it.'

'Thank the maker,' mused the Emperor as the two of them watched as Darth Consance completely gave up on holding back her motherly tears as she pronounced the two as Man and Wife. The kiss seemed to go on forever, as the newlyweds pressed themselves together in a burst of sheer bliss and passion, lips locked together in the most loving of embraces. It brought a tear to even Draco's eye, and he cheered and whooped with the rest of them as his little brother carried his wife down the aisle. It was possibly the most beautiful moment that Draco had ever seen, and the wave of pride that washed over him at his baby brother was immense to say the least.

Draco and the Emperor strolled at the back of the group, observing and laughing as the congregation filed out of the bridge, cheering and singing songs, whilst an orchestra of Imperial Navy musicians serenaded the procession as it wound its way towards the main hanger, which had been converted into a huge ballroom for the reception. The Skyproud's crew had outdone themselves. It was a night to remember.

'Did the Republic manage to get their hands on anything else?' the Emperor inquired as they fell back to a conversational distance from the group. Draco shrugged casually, his mind firmly on the events of his brother's big day.

'Nothing important, a few hazy sketches here and there, like I said, stuff that current Republic technology couldn't hope to create…' he racked his brains, 'some utter bollocks about a Space Station the size of a moon that could blow up a planet.'

Draco felt the Emperor fall out of step with him and turned to face his lord. Darth Gujoja's face was set in a thoughtful expression, as though Draco's words had scared him somehow. That said, even as Draco felt the confusion seep onto his face, he felt a subtle foreboding nudge against his conciousness, something far in the distance, like a tiny black speck on the horizon catching his view. He swallowed and looked the Emperor in the eye, searching for an answer, all merriment forgotten for the moment.

'I won't let this trouble me today,' said the Emperor carefully, earning a slow nod from Draco, 'but I sense something dark coming…not soon, but coming nonetheless.'

He looked Draco in the eye, and for the barest hint of a second Draco felt a tingle run up his spine, for in those eyes for the tiniest of moments he glimpsed something that he had been privately convinced the Emperor could not feel; fear. Draco swallowed hard.

'I sense death.'

_CLOSING AUTHOR'S NOTE._

_Hey all. _

_Thank you so much for reading this, my contribution to a far wider and incredibly awesome story by the one and only song-of-myself35990. 'Legacy of the Shadow Born' chapter 30 will pick up where this leaves off and, from what I have seen, promises to be fantastic!_

_Many thanks to 'song' for letting me dabble in her world._

_Many thanks also to Lucasarts for the masterpiece that is the Star Wars franchise._

_Anyone who leaves a review will be granted a puppy, and a lifetime supply of rainbows and sunshine and chocolate and happiness….honest!_

_May the Force be with you all._

_RFRG_


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